Statistics: Bucharest Increases Daily Population to 3 Million Because Commuters

The Romanian Capital, officially a city with around 2 million inhabitants, has turned itself into a metropolis regarding the daily flow of commuters. Bucharest has been compared to Manhattan by the percentage of commuters entering the city reported to the total population. According to recent statistics, 700,000 workers contribute to the people of the Romanian capital city, along with other categories, bringing it to more than 3 million at any given moment in the day.

If 1.6 million commuters enter Manhattan every day, 700,000 Bucharest residents work and live outside the city limits. In comparison to the active population in the respective counties, Bucharest manages to attract nearly half of it from Giurgiu County, more than a third from Călăraşi, and a quarter from Ialomiţa, Teleorman, or Dâmboviţa, the counties where the majority of localities are located. Within a radius of about 100 kilometres, it takes about an hour to an hour and a half by personal car.

On the other hand, the shuttle is not always safe, as there have been some very tragic accidents in recent years. Furthermore, there is a highway and a national road with two lanes from Ploieşti. Still, only some localities from Călăraşi or Ialomiţa benefit from the connection to highway 2. In contrast, from Dâmboviţa, Giurgiu, or Teleorman, the only option is a national road with one lane in each direction.

Besides, train service is slow, and public parking lots in the Capital have become more expensive. Moreover, in Bucharest, building permits for new real estate projects have decreased significantly in the last two years, so the only new housing options in the coming years will be in Ilfov, in communes with unpaved streets and blocks with septic tanks and water wells.

Those in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, and Timişoara earn the highest wages. In contrast, those from other regions of Romania like Teleorman, Caraş-Severin and Maramureş make the lowest, according to the National Institute of Statistics.

Thus, employees in Bucharest received an average net salary of EUR 933.09 in October 2021, up 16% from the same month in 2019, while those in Cluj received a net average wage of nearly EUR 870, up 22% from October 2021, the period before the pandemic. Those in Timiş exceeded EUR 774, up 23% from October 2021.