Stamate: Local Residents Should Be Employed Before Foreign Workers Are Recruited

Representatives of the Construim încredere (“Building Trust”) civic movement have drawn attention to the growing number of foreign workers arriving in the country, while tens of thousands of people already living in Moldova say they want to find employment. They believe the government needs to improve its approach to addressing labor shortages and recruiting workers from abroad, IPN.md reports. Movement founder Olesea Stamate said the General Inspectorate for Migration issued more than 4,000 documents for employment purposes in 2025. During the first eight months of this year, the number of people receiving the relevant documents for the first time exceeded 6,300. Movement member Inna Vîrtosu noted that, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, approximately 57,957 people who were not part of the labor force expressed a desire to work in 2025. Of these, 40,555 were ready to take up employment, while a further 87,000 were classified as underutilized labor. She said the National Employment Agency had reported that employers declared 41,575 job vacancies in 2025, while the number of registered unemployed people stood at 18,482. At the same time, only 15% of the 2,862 companies included in the agency’s analysis reported staff shortages. Nearly half of the surveyed employers said the recruitment process had taken longer than usual, while 31% had been unable to hire staff. Another issue concerns pay conditions. Since July 2025, the minimum salary threshold applicable to certain categories of foreign workers has been reduced from 100% to 50% of the average monthly wage across the economy, equivalent to approximately 8,700 lei. The movement’s representatives believe the consequences of this change should be assessed and comparative data on the wages of foreign and local workers published. The proposed measures include introducing an effective labor market test before foreign workers can be hired. Employers would have to demonstrate that they had made efforts to fill vacancies with candidates from the Republic of Moldova.