Study: Romanian Expats Have Low Job Satisfaction

According to the report of Internations.org., Romanian expats are generally unhappy with their working lives: just 66% are happy with their jobs in general (compared to 73% internationally), and 17 percent rate this factor negatively (vs. 13% globally). In fact, 7% are completely disappointed with their jobs, compared to just 3% internationally.

A closer look at the individual factors shows that Romanians working abroad are mainly unhappy with their work-life balance. Just 62% are happy with this factor (vs. 68% globally), while 20% are unhappy(vs. 16% globally). What is more, they only report average or slightly higher-than-average satisfaction with their career opportunities (50% vs. 49% globally), their working hours (71% vs. 70% globally), and their job security (70% vs. 67% globally). However, close to three-quarters (74%) rate the state of the local economy in their host country positively — globally just 65% say this about their current country of residence. This is hardly a surprise, considering that the two most common destinations Romanian expats work in are Germany and the Netherlands. Both countries are voted among the top 10 worldwide for the state of their local economy in the Working Abroad Index of the Expat Insider 2021 survey. The third most common destination, the UK, does not perform so well in this regard. However, landing in 35th place out of 59 countries, it still ranks far ahead of Romania, which ends up among the bottom10 worldwide (52nd). 

Romania is the third country in the world to live in as a digital nomad, being outranked only by Canada and UK. From this perspective, it seems that it’s better to work as an expat in Romania, than as a Romanian expat abroad.

As stated before, Romanian people are not so happy with their work abroad. Many of them choose to work in other countries because they are not satisfied with the working conditions in Romania. It seems that this thing applies abroad too, giving the fact that just 66% are happy with their jobs in general.