Analysis of skills demand in Moldova using vacancy informationThis draft: June, 2019

Disclaimer: The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this work do not necessarily reflect the views of The World Bank, its Board of Executive Directors, or the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

TABLE OF CONTENTSAcknowledgements..............................................................................................................................vi

List of acronyms and abbreviations......................................................................................................vii

1. Introduction.......................................................................................................................................8

2. Education, skills and other requirements of Moldovan employers.................................................14

2.1. Vacancies reported by employers to the ANOFM.....................................................................14

Data description...........................................................................................................................14

Region, ownership, sector and occupation..................................................................................15

Required education and experience.............................................................................................20

Requirements to skills and individual characteristics...................................................................22

Wage offer vs. requirements to skills...........................................................................................27

2.2. Vacancies from private job portals...........................................................................................30

Data description...........................................................................................................................30

Job characteristics: region, sector, occupation, wage offers and work schedule.........................31

Required education and experience.............................................................................................38

Requirements to skills and individual characteristics...................................................................40

2.3. Comparison of vacancies posted to the ANOFM and private job portals.................................45

3. Conclusions......................................................................................................................................49

References...........................................................................................................................................53

Annexes...............................................................................................................................................55

ii

LIST OF BOXESBox 1: Background information about ANOFM and services to employers...........................................9

Box 2: Description of the ANOFM dataset of vacancies.......................................................................14

Box 3: Classification of skills and indicators of skills intensity..............................................................23

Box 4: Description of the dataset of vacancies from private job portals.............................................30

LIST OF FIGURESFigure 1: ANOFM vacancies and formal wage employment by region (%)..........................................16

Figure 2: Share of public sector jobs in ANOFM vacancies and formal wage employment by region (%).......................................................................................................................................................16

Figure 3: ANOFM vacancies and formal wage employment by sector (%)..........................................17

Figure 4: ANOFM vacancies and wage employment by 1-digit occupational group and skill level (%)18

Figure 5: Top 20 occupations in ANOFM vacancies (%).......................................................................19

Figure 6: ANOFM vacancies by 1-digit occupational group and region (% of occupation in total/region)........................................................................................................................................19

Figure 7: ANOFM vacancies by required education and 1-digit occupational group (%).....................20

Figure 8: ANOFM vacancies by required experience and 1-digit occupational group (%)...................22

Figure 9: Proportion of ANOFM vacancies with wage offer below 2380 MDL by the ownership type, region and sector (%)...........................................................................................................................28

Figure 10: Median of the minimum and maximum wage offers in ANOFM vacancies vs. intensity of skills requirements by 2-digit occupational group...............................................................................29

Figure 11: Vacancies from private job portals and formal wage employment by region (%)..............32

Figure 12: Vacancies from private job portals and formal wage employment by sector (%)...............33

Figure 13: Vacancies from private job portals and wage employment by 1-digit occupational group (%).......................................................................................................................................................34

Figure 14: Top 20 occupations in the sample of vacancies from private job portals (%).....................35

Figure 15: Vacancies from private job portals reporting some starting salary level by 2-digit occupational group (%)........................................................................................................................36

Figure 16: Vacancies from private job portals by work schedule (%)..................................................37

Figure 17: Vacancies from private job portals by non-standard work schedule and 2-digit occupational group (%)........................................................................................................................37

Figure 18: Vacancies from private job portals by required education and 2-digit occupational group (%).......................................................................................................................................................39

Figure 19: Vacancies from private job portals by required experience and 2-digit occupational group (%).......................................................................................................................................................40

Figure 20: Vacancies by 1-digit occupational group and skill level: private job portals vs. ANOFM (%).............................................................................................................................................................45

iii

Figure 21: Vacancies by sector: private job portals vs. ANOFM (%).....................................................46

Figure 22: Requirements to education and skills in vacancies: private job portals vs. ANOFM (%).....47

Figure 23: Intensity of requirements to skills in vacancies by 2-digit occupational group: private job portals vs. ANOFM...............................................................................................................................48

LIST OF TABLESTable 1: Registered vacancies, overall and by broad occupational group and by ownership type, 2013-2018...........................................................................................................................................10

Table 2: Number of vacancies by economic sector according to NBS report, 2017.............................10

Table 3: Ranking of skills requested by employers in vacancies reported to the ANOFM by a 2-digit occupational group..............................................................................................................................25

Table 4: Ranking of skills requested by employers in vacancies posted to private job portals by a 2-digit occupational group......................................................................................................................43

ANNEXESAnnex 1: Descriptive statistics of vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017-February 2018.....................................................................................................................................................55

Annex 2: ILO mapping of skill levels to occupations and education levels...........................................57

Annex 3: ANOFM vacancies by 2-digit occupational group.................................................................58

Annex 4: Top ten 4-digit occupations, total and by region (ANOFM vacancies, December 2017-February 2018)....................................................................................................................................60

Annex 5: Mapping of 1- and 2-digit occupational groups to the mode education levels according to requirements of Moldovan employers (ANOFM vacancies)................................................................62

Annex 6: Required experience by 2-digit occupational group (ANOFM vacancies)*...........................64

Annex 7: Classification of skills and other requirements used in the analysis.....................................65

Annex 8: The percentage of ANOFM vacancies in which a particular skill is demanded within a 2-digit occupational group (%)........................................................................................................................67

Annex 9: The percentage of ANOFM vacancies in which additional characteristics are required in job description within a 2-digit occupational group (%)............................................................................69

Annex 10: Examples of job-specific (technical) skills reported by employers in the ANOFM dataset. 71

Annex 11: Descriptive statistics of wage offers reported by employers in the ANOFM dataset..........72

Annex 12: The determinants of the variation in minimum wage offers reported by employers in the ANOFM dataset...................................................................................................................................72

Annex 13: Mapping between Moldovan classification of economic activities (sectors) and categories used in private job portals...................................................................................................................73

Annex 14: Descriptive statistics of vacancies scraped from online private job portals during December 2017-February 2018...........................................................................................................74

Annex 15: Vacancies from private job portals by 2-digit occupational group......................................76

iv

Annex 16: Top 20 fields of studies in the sample of vacancies from private job portals.....................77

Annex 17: The percentage of vacancies from private job portals in which a particular skill is demanded within a 2-digit occupational group (%).............................................................................78

Annex 18: The percentage of vacancies from private job portals in which additional characteristics are required in job description within a 2-digit occupational group (%)..............................................81

Annex 19: Examples of job-specific (technical) reported by employers in vacancies scraped from private job portals by 2-digit occupational group................................................................................83

Annex 20: Percentage of vacancies posted at JOBLIST.MD having requirement to Romanian and/or Russian languages by 2-digit occupational group (%)..........................................................................85

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This report has been written by Olga Kupets, under the overall guidance from Victoria Levin and Yulia Smolyar (Task Team Leaders). The team is thankful for the insightful comments and suggestions received from Cem Mete (Practice Manager, Social Protection and Jobs) and from peer reviewers Shinsaku Nomura (Senior Economist, GED) and Harry Moroz (Economist, GSP).

The data collection and processing have been supported by the World Bank-financed Strengthening Effective Social Safety Nets Project. The analysis has been carried out under the Labor Market Analytics Activity financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

The team is grateful to the National Employment Agency of the Republic of Moldova (Agenția Națională Pentru Ocuparea Forței de Muncă or ANOFM) for access to its dataset of vacancies and to the Intuitio Creative SRL (Alex Svet and Stanislav Oaserele) for the web scraping of vacancies from Moldovan private job portals (www.rabota.md and joblist.md). The team thanks Maria Vremis for initial processing of the data from private job portals and Anastasia Kulikovskaia for translation of job requirements and working conditions described in the ANOFM vacancies with their simultaneous categorization. The author also thanks her research assistants – Mykhailo Babii who helped with further data processing including translation and categorization of variables in the ANOFM data in line with Moldovan classifications, and Roman Koshovnyk who extracted information about job-specific (technical) skills in the dataset of vacancies from private job portals.

vi

LIST OF ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

ANOFM National Employment Agency of the Republic of Moldova (Agenția Națională Pentru

Ocuparea Forței de Muncă)

API Application Programming Interface

BGT Burning Glass Technologies

EUR Euro

FL foreign language

HRM Human Resource Management

ICT/IT Information and Communication Technology/Information Technology

ILO International Labour Organization

ISCED International Standard Classification of Education

ISCED-F International Standard Classification of Education Fields of Education and Training –

2013

ISCO International Standard Classification of Occupations – 2008

LFS Labor Force Survey

MDL Moldovan Leu

NACE Rev.2 Statistical classification of economic activities (Nomenclature Statistique Des

Activités Économiques Dans La Communauté Européenne)

NBS National Bureau of Statistics

n.a. not available

PES Public Employment Service

PSNT Post-secondary non-tertiary (education)

STEM Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

USD US Dollar

vii

1. INTRODUCTION

Moldova has made significant progress in economic growth and poverty reduction since 2000, but the growth model has mainly relied on remittances, with limited job creation (World Bank, 2016a; Merroto et al., 2016). In order to sustain this progress and to catch up with the living standards of other countries in the region, Moldova requires a new growth model which is driven by higher private sector growth and creation of more and better jobs. World Bank (2017a) specifies three main policy areas to support Moldova’s transition towards a new model: (i) economic governance – strengthening the rule of law and accountability in economic institutions, (ii) service governance – improving efficiency, quality and inclusive access to public services, and (iii) skills development – enhancing the quality and relevance of education and training to enable the acquisition of job-related skills. The Moldova’s Government recognizes in its strategic documents (for example, Moldova 2020 National Development Strategy) that aligning skills supply with demand is crucial to expand job opportunities and to boost productivity and innovation. But in order to develop the necessary job-related skills in the education and training system, it is important to understand which skills are required by Moldovan employers.

Despite several data sources and studies on labor or skills demand and needs available in Moldova, there are still important knowledge gaps. Statistics of the National Employment Agency (aka ANOFM), based on the vacancies reported by employers, and of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), based on the quarterly surveys of firms with at least 4 employees on mobility of employees and jobs, do not provide assessment of skills in demand. The skills module added to the Moldova’s Labor Market Forecast Survey suffers from the same disadvantage as the STEP employer surveys and other surveys of firms that analyze skills demand and gaps in the pre-determined list of skills (Rutkowski et al., 2017). Ad hoc surveys of firms, qualitative studies or private consultations on skills needs are often focused on some preselected sectors and do not cover skills demand in the economy as a whole, including firms of different size, ownership, formal-informal status, economic sector, etc.1

This report provides the complementary analysis of skills demand in Moldova gleaned from two sources of vacancies – vacancies shared by employers with the ANOFM and vacancies scraped from two major online job portals. The main objective of this report is to fill the observed knowledge gap about employers’ demand for formal qualifications and skills based on the analysis of requirements specified in job vacancy postings. Another objective is to compare which vacancies get to the ANOFM and to private portals in order to understand the reach of the ANOFM relative to the overall labor and skills demand and to offer policy recommendations.

Aggregated information about vacancies registered by the ANOFM is the main data source on vacancies available in Moldova which is collected and reported regularly and openly . Although employers are obliged to inform the ANOFM about all vacancies and they can get job mediation and other services in the local employment office (see Box 1), many companies do not report their vacancies to the ANOFM preferring other recruitment channels (Popa et al., 2013; ILO, 2017). As a consequence the ANOFM covers only part of all available vacancies in the economy. According to information of the ANOFM about registered vacancies (Table 1), the number of vacancies has increased substantially since 2013, especially in the non-public sector.

1 For example, the World Bank report (2017b) provides information on how Moldovan employers assess the availability and skills of the workforce, which HRM systems and practices they use, how they address the skills-related issues and whether they forecast the future skills needs based on the interviews with private sector representatives in 6 sectors (Transportation, IT, Light Manufacturing, Commerce, Agriculture and Food processing), training providers and government representatives and the desk research.

8

Box 1: Background information about ANOFM and services to employers

The National Employment Agency is a State agency reporting to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Social Protection (MoHLSP). The Agency comprises one central office (ANOFM) and thirty-five local employment agencies (AOFM) with a total number of 335 employees that is planned to be reduced to 250 employees in the ongoing reform. The organizational and geographical structure of the agency ensures the availability of basic employment services (registration, labor market information, job placement, employment counselling and individual employment planning) and access to passive schemes and training programmes. In larger offices staff is organized along functions (services to unemployed clients, services to employers and job mediation, management of training programmes), while in smaller offices front staff covers all services and programmes, except the management of passive programmes.

The Agency currently delivers all the key functions mandated to a modern public employment service, including labour market information, employment counselling and career guidance, active and passive labour market programs. The new law On Employment support and insurance against unemployment passed in 2018 introduced a new portfolio of active labor market programs (ALMPs), namely vocational training, on-the-job training, traineeships, employment subsidies, self-employment grant, local initiatives grant, mobility grant, and vocational rehabilitation and work-place adaptation for people with disabilities.

According to the law, employers are obliged to inform NEA/ANOFM about all vacancies within 5 days, but there is no penalty if they do not do this. Vacancies can be notified in a written form, by telephone/fax or by e-mail of the local employment agency. All job notifications are screened by a counsellor prior to their posting on the web site www.angajat.md.

Job mediation is carried out electronically by matching the key features of the vacancy (occupational code, qualifications and experience required) with the characteristics of registered unemployed. The local employment agencies also provide additional services to employers, such as short-listing of potential candidates and arranging job interviews either in their own or employers’ premises.

The ILO assessment (2017) defines three main constraints to the effective job placement by the ANOFM: (i) the mismatch between the skills required by employers and the skills of the registered unemployed; (ii) the prevalence of low-paid jobs among the vacancies registered by the ANOFM; and (iii) the limited financial resources available to visit employers.

Sources: ILO (2017), Ferré and Tzimas (2019).

According to the detailed reports of the ANOFM about vacancies provided twice a month, 2 Chisinau accounts for about 40 percent of all vacancies. For comparison, the share of Chisinau municipality in total employment according to the Labor Force Survey in 2017 was 26.3 percent, whereas its share in total unemployment was 37.8 percent.3 This discrepancy can be partly explained by a large share of formal sector enterprises and organizations in Chisinau that tend to report vacancies to ANOFM and to a high turnover of workers who have more and better employment alternatives in the capital city.

Up to 20 percent of ANOFM vacancies require higher or secondary specialized education (tertiary and post-secondary non-tertiary education according to our classification). This is substantially smaller compared to the share of individuals with these levels of education in total employment (37.9 percent overall and 50.3 percent among wage and salaried workers in 2017), ILO-defined unemployment (33.7 percent) and total population aged 15 years and above (30.1 percent). 4 As our 2 See “Piața muncii: Locuri vacante la XX.XX.2018” at http://www.anofm.md/documents.3 Source: NBS Statistical databank, Regional statistics, “Population aged 15 years and over by statistical regions, labour status, level of education, age groups, sex and regions, 2017”.4 Source: NBS Statistical databank, Social statistics, “Population aged 15 years and over by economic status by Economic status, Level of education, Years, Sex and Area, 2017”.

9

comparative analysis below shows, this underrepresentation of jobs for higher-educated workers is most likely due to incomplete and biased data on vacancies reported to ANOFM. The most popular occupations in these educational groups are health professionals and associate professionals, professionals and associate professionals in education, professionals and associate professionals in financial, economic or commercial activities and accounting, engineers and technicians, inspectors and civil servants.

Over 80 percent of vacancies required secondary vocational education or lower level of education. The most popular occupational groups in terms of vacancies in this education group are workers in the textile and clothing sector, plant and machine operators and assemblers, skilled industrial workers, workers in transport and telecommunications, in hotels and restaurants and in retail trade.

Table 1: Registered vacancies, overall and by broad occupational group and by ownership type, 2013-2018

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018Number of enterprises reporting vacancies 6,069 6,078 5,870 5,911 5,773 5,447Number of registered vacancies 37,530 41,536 42,345 44,612 45,429 49,200By occupational group

white-collar 9,611 12,382 11,737 14,457 14,254 14,054blue-collar 27,919 29,154 30,608 30,155 31,175 35,146

By ownership of firmsPublic 10,210 13,120 10,857 11,215 11,806 13,074Private 22,299 22,052 24,484 26,465 27,293 28,092Other 5,021 6,364 7,004 6,932 6,330 8,034

Source: ANOFM, compiled by the author from the reports (http://www.anofm.md/documents).

An alternative source of information about vacancies in Moldova is based on the NBS establishment surveys on mobility of employees and jobs. According to it, the number of vacant jobs at the end of 2017 was 33,101 jobs or about 4.5 percent of all available jobs in the economy (Table 2). It is worth mentioning that this number appears to be smaller than the number of vacancies reported by the ANOFM in Table 1. This is explained by the fact that annual statistics on vacancies provided by the ANOFM covers all vacancies reported to it by employers since the beginning of the year, whereas the NBS statistics refers to the end-of-year stock of vacancies available in surveyed firms with 4 and more employees and in all budgetary institutions regardless of the number of employees.5 The leading sector in terms of the number of vacancies and their share in the total number of jobs in the sector is Public administration and defense, followed by Human health and social work activities, and Manufacturing.

Table 2: Number of vacancies by economic sector according to NBS report, 2017

Economic activities (NACE Rev.2) NACE Rev.2 code

Number of vacancies

Share of vacancies in the total number of jobs (%)

Total 33,101 4.5Agriculture, forestry and fishing A 1,392 3.1Mining and quarrying B 270 10.3Manufacturing C 4,984 4.4Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply

D 415 3.5

Water supply; sewerage, waste E 373 4.3

5 According to the ANOFM brief “Piața muncii: Locuri vacante 22.12.2017”, the stock of vacancies in the ANOFM dataset was 8896, that is less than 30% of all vacancies available in surveyed firms with 4 and more employees and in all budgetary institutions regardless of the number of employees in the end of 2017 (Table2).

10

management and remediation activitiesConstruction F 910 3.5Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles

G 2,098 2.1

Transportation and storage H 2,507 5.5Accommodation and food service activities I 612 4.2Information and communication J 577 2.9Financial and insurance activities K 431 2.9Real estate activities L 467 3.8Professional, scientific and technical activities

M 908 5.2

Administrative and support service activities N 501 3.5Public administration and defense; compulsory social security

O 6,599 11.2

Education P 3,616 2.8Human health and social work activities Q 5,349 6.7Arts, entertainment and recreation R 930 5.9Other service activities S 164 2.1

Source: NBS on-line databank, based on the statistical survey of firms on mobility of employees and jobs. The data includes social and economic units with 4 and more employees and all budgetary institutions regardless of the number of employees. Without the data on districts from the left side of the river Nistru and municipality Bender.

Notes: According to the NBS, job vacancies are considered to be positions for persons outside the unit (but persons from the unit can also compete for them), whether they are for definite or indefinite duration, full time or part time program and for which the employer carries out concrete actions to find a suitable candidate.

Skills Module of the Moldovan Labor Market Forecast Survey 2016 provides important information about the skills gaps in the Moldovan labor market (Rutkowski et al., 2017). The survey builds on the World Bank Skills toward Employment and Productivity (STEP) project but the approach to measuring the skills gaps adopted in the Skills Module differs somewhat from that used in STEP employer surveys.6 The study finds that inadequate workforce skills are a significant obstacle to the performance of many Moldovan firms, with poor work ethic, inadequate technical skills, and lack of motivation being the most important skills obstacles. But the survey of employers lacks information on which particular technical skills are required for a given occupation or sector as it uses the questionnaire with a pre-determined list of grouped skills. This was necessitated by the scope of the survey which covered over 3,200 firms across the whole economy, i.e. not sector-specific.

Online job vacancies became an increasingly popular complementary source of data for a deeper analysis of skills demand (Cedefop, 2019 a, b;7 Hershbein and Kahn, 2018; Beblavy et al., 2016a, b, c, 2017; Kurekova et al., 2015a, b; Burning Glass Technologies, 2015; Carnevale et al., 2014). Among the main advantages of this data is a large number of observations and real-time information on skills and other job requirements which is difficult to gather via traditional methods such as surveys or administrative records (Cedefop, 2019a; Rutkowski et al., 2017). Access to information based on the analysis of online job vacancies provides opportunities for many users, including employers and

6 The major difference is that it looked at what degree the current level of employee skills was sufficient for the effective performance of firms rather than on the importance of different skills for employers (when deciding which new employees should be retained after a probation period) as in the first wave of STEP, or the difference between the current skills and the required skills for a typical worker used in the second wave of STEP surveys.7 Skills Online Vacancy Analysis Tool for Europe (Skills-OVATE) provides detailed information on occupations and employer skill demands as requested in online job vacancies in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom (http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/data-visualisations/skills-online-vacancies).

11

job seekers, employment services and career guidance practitioners, education and training providers and policymakers (Cedefop, 2019a).

On the other hand, there are several limitations on using online job vacancies as a data source for the labor market analysis. One of the major problems is the representativeness and reliability of online job vacancies data (Cedefop, 2019a; Kurekova et al., 2015b). Vacancies in some sectors and occupations are more likely to be advertised on online job portals than others and therefore the data are subject to occupational and qualification bias. Some authors argue that the representativeness of online job vacancies becomes a less serious problem if the internet penetration rate is high and workers’ digital skills improve over time, or if there is a dominant job portal that covers most vacancies in the country (Kurekova et al., 2015b; Beblavy et al., 2016c). In order to assess the representativeness of job vacancy data it is recommended to compare its occupational and sectoral structure to some representative data that describe the structure of employers and/or employees in the country. But it should be taken into account that unlike the typical data on employment (stock), vacancies show new job openings as well as turnover of existing jobs (flow), and one cannot distinguish between new jobs vs. turnover. Besides, the market of online job ads comprises multiple actors such as private job portals, public employment service portals, recruitment agency portals, online newspapers and employers’ portals, and the reliability of the vacancy data definitely depends on the portals selected for the analysis. (Cedefop, 2019 a, b). Finally, the original data are not stored in a research-friendly format because the main objective of online job portals is to provide a platform for matching job seekers to career opportunities rather than to collect data for researchers. Therefore, preparation of the dataset for the statistical analysis requires substantial efforts of IT specialists and researchers, who have to extract data from websites (using scraping, crawling or direct access via API), clean data from ‘noise’ such as irrelevant advertisements, identify and remove duplicates within and across platforms, classify variables, especially occupations and skills, in a standardized way, translate multilingual job vacancy notices into one language, etc. And despite up-to-date techniques and enormous efforts to produce viable data, final data are still imperfect and may contain systemic errors (Cedefop, 2019a).

Analysis performed in this report is subject to the similar limitations. Job vacancies reported to the ANOFM and two online private job portals are only a sample of the population of all job vacancies in Moldova, 8 and there is no reliable information about the population of vacancies and its structure to adjust for representativeness. For that reason, we compare the structure of vacancies to that of wage employment using information on the end-of-year stock of employees reported by economic units with at least 1 employee or on average year wage employment of individuals aged 15 years and above in accordance with the Labor Force Survey (LFS). But we agree with Kurekova et al. (2015b) that the LFS is not a suitable source of data about the structure of the demand side because it includes realized matches between labor supply and demand if we look at employment or considers only a part of labor supply if we look at unemployment. Besides, it does not properly reflect current demand in a particular season or a labor market segment. Another important data quality limitation follows from the fact that vacancy postings provide main job description in an unstructured text in several languages (Romanian, Russian, and sometimes English). Despite time-consuming data manipulation and classification techniques applied by us to make the information suitable for statistical analysis, the risk of classification and measurement errors remains high. Given these limitations, the results presented in the next chapter should be treated with appropriate caution. It is recommended to focus on the qualitative aspects of job requirements across different occupations rather than on the quantitative analysis of the frequency of such requirements.

8 In addition to www.rabota.md and joblist.md used in our study, there are other popular job portals in Moldova, for example, www.alljobs.md, https://999.md/ro/category/work, https://makler.md/chisinau/job, job.900.md. Recruitment agencies, online newspapers, employers’ portals, as well as vacancies filled internally or advertised offline are also important sources of job vacancies (Cedefop, 2019a) which are not covered in our study.

12

Chapter 2 provides description of the data across available characteristics and presents the detailed results on requirements to education, experience and skills reported in vacancies from the ANOFM and private job portals separately. Then it compares these actors in the Moldovan job market in terms of the occupational, sectoral and regional composition of vacancies and the incidence of requirements to skills. Chapter 3 summarizes the main findings and offers policy recommendations.

13

2. EDUCATION, SKILLS AND OTHER REQUIREMENTS OF MOLDOVAN EMPLOYERS

2.1. Vacancies reported by employers to the ANOFMData descriptionThe dataset of vacancies reported by Moldovan employers to the ANOFM is used to analyze requirements of employers to education and skills of job seekers and other important characteristics of available job vacancies reported to the public employment agency (Box 2). To enable comparison of information from public and private job platforms, we reduced the period of observation to the same period that has been used for scraping of vacancies from online job portals, i.e. December 2017 – February 2018. Hirings are likely to follow seasonal employment patterns with an increase in agriculture, construction, retail trade and restaurants in the second and third quarters followed by a decrease in the fourth quarter of each year, and therefore the analysis of vacancies reported in winter applies to a low-demand season and does not reflect labor demand throughout the year.

Box 2: Description of the ANOFM dataset of vacancies

The dataset includes information reported by employers in the form “OFERTA privind locurile de muncă vacante”. Each observation in the original dataset corresponded to a job posting (registration) from a given employer at a given point of time. It contains a number of elements, including: firm’s id, region, the type of ownership, economic sector, the dates of vacancy registration and de-registration, job title (occupation), number of vacancies (supposedly with the same requirements and description), required level of education and experience, a minimum and maximum levels of offered wage, the contract type (fixed-term, permanent=indefinite-term, or a secondary job9), type of vacancy (a newly created job or the one that became available due to worker turnover), three indicator variables showing whether a given job is relevant for students, pensioners or disabled as self-reported by employer, and the job description shown as an unstructured text.

Some vacancies may have exactly the same requirements to education and experience and same wage offer and therefore they are reported by employers in one job posting. Using information about the number of identical vacancies as reported by employers in a job posting form, the dataset has been transformed from a posting-level data to a vacancy-level data. As a result, the dataset increased from 3,528 unique observations to 10,806 observations with duplications.

Variables on the ownership type, economic sector, and required level of education have been categorized in line with Moldovan classifications. All job titles are named in the ANOFM dataset in line with the Moldovan classification of occupations which is based on the ISCO-2008. This allows a relatively easy conversion of job titles into 4-digit ISCO codes with respective titles in English and further conversion to 2- and 1-digit occupational groups in a later stage of the data analysis.

One of the benefits of the ANOFM dataset of vacancies is that all firms posting their vacancies to the ANOFM report the level of education that is required for a vacant job. This allows analyzing actual

9 According to Article 267 of the Labor Code of Moldova (http://lex.justice.md/ru/326757/), a secondary job (employment) is a job made temporarily or permanently in addition to the person's main job in accordance with an individual labor contract that should specify that a given job is a secondary one.

14

requirements of employers to formal education necessary to perform a given job in Moldova rather than using some pre-determined correspondence between occupation and education that comes from international organizations (for example, the ILO that elaborated the international standard classification of occupations, ISCO).

The major challenge was to extract information about job requirements and working conditions from the free-text job description in Romanian. This piece of work has been done with help of the professional translator who translated information about job requirements and working conditions into English with a simultaneous systematization and unification. In a later stage, the author extracted single words or expressions referring to job requirements to code them into variables with skills requirements using the same groups of skills as in the Missing Skills report (Rutkowski et al., 2017) and additional requirements to gender, age, education, etc.

Although the standard vacancy registration form includes separate entries for requirements about language proficiency, computer skills, having a driving license and other aspect, our dataset does not contain respective variables (ANOFM has not provided this information). Given this, we analyze only those requirements to skills and individual characteristics that were reported by employers in a free-text job description (see Box 3 below).

ANOFM final dataset of vacancies registered between 1 December 2017 and 28 February 2018 includes 10,806 job vacancies. The overwhelming majority of them became available due to labor turnover, i.e. refer to replacement hiring, and offer permanent contracts with an indefinite term (Annex 1). A small share of vacancies are reported by employers as being appropriate for disabled, pensioners or students: they account for 2.7, 2.6 and 3 percent of all vacancies, respectively.

8,449 vacancies came from 1,349 firms with the specified identification number, and the remaining 2,357 vacancies were registered by unspecified firms. Nearly half of firms (46.8 percent) reported 1 vacancy within the observed period, 24.5 percent reported 2 or 3 vacancies, 19.3 percent of firms had from 4 to 11 vacancies, but there are also firms that reported over 100 vacancies within a short period of time. Some employers reported identical vacancies in one job posting; the number of such identical vacancies per one firm varies in our dataset from 2 to 250. The absolute leaders in terms of the number of reported vacancies within 3 months are three private firms looking for hundreds of garment and related pattern-makers and cutters. Overall, apparel industry jobs (garment and related pattern-makers and cutters, tailors and dressmakers) make up over 60 percent of all vacancies reported by firms with over 100 vacancies between 1 December 2017 and 28 February 2018.

Remarkably, 4.2 percent of all vacancies registered during December 2017 – February 2018 were deregistered in the same day when were opened, probably because employers notified vacancies for positions that are already taken as noticed in the ILO report (2017). Nearly one in five vacancies was deregistered within a month since registration. We believe that the bulk of these vacancies were filled but some of them could be simply taken off the market. On the other hand, about 73 percent of vacancies remained opened as of beginning of March 2018.

Region, ownership, sector and occupationVacancies reported to the ANOFM are almost evenly distributed across macroregions, except for T.A.U. Gagauzia. This is expected as ANOFM has local offices across the country where a comprehensive set of free services is provided to all employers, regardless of their location, ownership and recruiting budgets. The Chisinau municipality contributed slightly more vacancies than the other regions (Figure 1). However, the share of the capital region in the ANOFM vacancies is substantially smaller than its share in the end-of-year stock of employees reported by real sector economic units with 1 and more employees and all institutions in the budgetary sector. On the other hand, the share of South in the dataset of ANOFM vacancies reported during December 2017 –

15

February 2018 is twice as large as its share in registered wage employment in the end of 2017, mainly due to a lot of vacancies coming from several manufacturing companies in Cahul and Cimislia.

Figure 1: ANOFM vacancies and formal wage employment by region (%)

Mun.Chisinau

North

Center

South

T.A.U. Gagauzia

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

Wage employment ANOFM vacancies, only jobs in Moldova ANOFM vacancies, all

Percentage of vacancies/ wage employment

Source: Wage employment: Firm-level data on 31 December 2017, NBS online data bank (series: Number of employees on 31 December by Districts/Regions, Years and Sex), ANOFM vacancies: author’s estimations.

Notes: The sample includes 10,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018. “Only jobs in Moldova” excludes 1000 vacancies for the work abroad. Regions refer to development regions in accordance with the Law no. 438-XVI from 28.12.2006 on regional development in Moldova (http://www.statistica.md/pageview.php?l=en&idc=349&id=5091).

Local firms with private or mixed ownership provide over half of ANOFM vacancies (Annex 1). Nearly 23 percent of all vacancies are reported by firms with foreign ownership or joint ventures, with 1000 vacancies of them intended for the work abroad. Vacancies from state-owned or municipal enterprises account for 24 percent of vacancies for the work in Moldova, which is substantially smaller than the share of public ownership in formal wage employment in the end of 2017 (Figure 2). Although vacancies from private companies comprise the largest share in all regions, Central region stands out in terms of the relatively high share of vacancies from state-owned enterprises or organizations (over 36 percent of vacancies reported in the region). At the same time, the share of vacancies reported by firms with some foreign ownership is much higher in North, South and T.A.U. Gagauzia compared to the central regions.

Figure 2: Share of public sector jobs in ANOFM vacancies and formal wage employment by region (%)

Mun.Chisinau

North

Center

South

T.A.U. Gagauzia

Total

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Percentage of vacancies/ formal wage employment

Formal wage employment ANOFM vacancies, only jobs in Moldova

16

Source: Wage employment: Firm-level data on 31 December 2017, NBS online data bank (series: Number of employees on 31 December by Districts/Regions, Years and Forms of ownership), ANOFM vacancies: author’s estimations.

Notes: The sample includes 9,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, excluding 1000 vacancies for the work abroad. Public includes State and Municipal.

The top sector providing 40 percent of all ANOFM vacancies is manufacturing . Manufacturing, mining and quarrying, construction and other service activities are significantly overrepresented in the dataset of vacancies reported to the ANOFM compared to formal wage employment in the end of 2017 (Figure 3). When we exclude 1,000 vacancies for the work abroad (all in construction), the share of construction decreases to that observed in total wage employment in 2017. On the other hand, the unsatisfied demand in manufacturing becomes even more remarkable when only jobs to be performed in Moldova are taken into account (Figure 3). Companies representing modern sectors such as Information and communication, Financial and insurance activities, Real estate activities, Professional, scientific and technical activities, Administrative and support service activities are likely to post a high proportion of their vacancies on on-line job portals, own web-pages or social media, and therefore they seem invisible in the ANOFM pool of vacancies (Figure 3, Annex 1).

Figure 3: ANOFM vacancies and formal wage employment by sector (%)

Agriculture, forestry and fishingMining and quarrying

ManufacturingElectricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply

Water supply; sewerage, waste management Construction

Wholesale and retail tradeTransportation and storage

Accommodation and food service activitiesInformation and communication

Financial and insurance activitiesReal estate activities

Professional, scientific and technical activitiesAdministrative and support service activities

Public administration and defenceEducation

Human health and social work activitiesArts, entertainment and recreation

Other service activities

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

Formal wage employment ANOFM vacancies, only jobs in Moldova ANOFM vacancies, all

Percentage of vacancies/ formal wage employment

Source: Wage employment: Firm-level data on 31 December 2017, NBS online data bank (series: Number of employees by Economic activities, Years, Forms of ownership, Sex and Indicators), ANOFM vacancies: author’s estimations.

Notes: The sample includes 10,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018. “Only jobs in Moldova” excludes 1000 vacancies for the work abroad.

The ANOFM tends to handle more low to medium-skilled manual jobs. Over 50 percent of all vacancies registered during December 2017 – February 2018 in the ANOFM are manual skilled jobs (Craft and related trades workers, Plant and machine operators) and one in five jobs is from the lowest-skill occupational group – Elementary occupations (Figure 4). Comparison of the occupational

17

composition of ANOFM vacancies to total wage employment according to the LFS-2017 10 reveals that manual skilled jobs and elementary occupations are hugely overrepresented in the dataset of ANOFM vacancies whereas high-skilled and non-manual medium-level jobs are underrepresented. The similar trend is found in many EU countries where the PES portals focus on low and unskilled work (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Cyprus and Slovakia) or on semi-skilled and blue-collar jobs in manufacturing and other labor-intensive fields (Estonia, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain) (Cedefop, 2019b). This is explained by the fact that job advertisements in public portals usually target a specific part of the workforce – registered unemployed, and companies looking for highly qualified managers or professionals might assume that the PES does not have enough suitable candidates among their target group.

Figure 4: ANOFM vacancies and wage employment by 1-digit occupational group and skill level (%)

Senior officials and managers

Professionals

Technicians and associate professionals

Clerks

Service workers and shop and market sales workers

Skilled agricultural and fishery workers

Craft and related trades workers

Plant and machine operators and assemblers

Elementary occupations

Skill

level

4Sk

illlev

el 3

Skill

level

2Sk

illlev

el 1

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

Wage employment ANOFM vacancies, only jobs in Moldova ANOFM vacancies, all

Percentage of vacancies/ wage employment

Source: Wage employment: LFS in 2017, NBS online data bank (series: Employed population by status in employment, economic activities, years, sex, area and occupations); ANOFM vacancies: author’s estimations. “Only jobs in Moldova” excludes 1000 vacancies for the work abroad.

Notes: The sample includes 10,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018. Skill levels are defined in accordance with the ILO mapping of skill levels to occupations (Annex 2).

The most popular 2-digit occupational group in the ANOFM dataset is Food processing, wood working, garment and other craft and related trades workers, followed by Refuse workers and other elementary workers, Stationary plant and machine operators, Personal service workers, and Agricultural, forestry and fishery laborers (Figure 5, Annex 3). These five occupations account together for half of all vacancies in the ANOFM dataset. For comparison, the share of these occupations in wage employment in 2016 was 17.8 percent (Annex 3). Meanwhile, the top occupation belonging to the group of high-skilled jobs – business and administration professionals – comprises only 3 percent of ANOFM vacancies, compared to 5 percent of all salaried and wage workers in Moldova in 2016.

10 Here we use the LFS data because the NBS does not provide statistics on the end-of-year stock of employees reported by economic units across occupations.

18

Figure 5: Top 20 occupations in ANOFM vacancies (%)

Food processing, wood working, garment and other craft and related trades workers

Stationary plant and machine operators

Agricultural, forestry and fishery laborers

Metal, machinery and related trades workers

Drivers and mobile plant operators

Cleaners and helpers

Assemblers

Customer services clerks

Protective services workers

Science and engineering associate professionals

0 5 10 15 20 25 30Percentage of vacancies (only jobs in Moldova)

Notes: The sample includes 9,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, excluding vacancies for the work abroad. Occupations are classified at 2-digit ISCO level. Green bars refer to Skill level 4 occupations, light green bars – Skill level 3 occupations, blue bars – Skill level 2 occupations, and dark blue – Skill level 1 occupations. Skill levels are defined in accordance with the ILO mapping of skill levels to occupations (Annex 2).

There is a huge heterogeneity across regions in terms of the skill content of job postings (based on occupational group), with a larger proportion of high-skilled or non-manual skilled jobs posted in the Chisinau municipality, of skilled manual jobs in North and T.A.U. Gagauzia, and of unskilled (elementary) jobs in Center and South (Figure 6).

Figure 6: ANOFM vacancies by 1-digit occupational group and region (% of occupation in total/region)

Senio

r offic

ials a

nd m

anag

ers

Prof

essio

nals

Tech

nician

s and

asso

ciate

prof

essio

... Clerk

s

Serv

ice w

orke

rs an

d sho

p and

mar

ke...

Skille

d agr

icultu

ral a

nd fis

hery

wor

...

Craft

and r

elated

trad

es w

orke

rs

Plant

and m

achin

e ope

rato

rs an

d a...

Eleme

ntar

y occu

patio

ns

0

10

20

30

40

50

Mun.Chisinau North Center South T.A.U. Gagauzia Total

19

Notes: The sample includes 9,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, excluding vacancies for the work abroad.

As Annex 4 shows, the list of top 10 detailed (4-digit ISCO) occupations contains nearly the same occupations in all regions, namely Garment and related pattern-makers and cutters, Cleaners and helpers in offices, hotels and other establishments (total and in 5 regions), Odd job persons (total and in 4 regions), Cooks, Shop sales assistants (total and in 3 regions). There is only one occupation in the list of top 10 occupations in one region (South) that refers to high-skilled jobs – Policy administration professionals. All other occupations are lower-skilled jobs belonging to ISCO groups 4 (clerks) to 9 (elementary occupations).

Required education and experienceOver 80 percent of ANOFM vacancies require vocational or lower level of education. This fully corresponds with the sectoral and occupational composition of vacancies which is skewed to lower-skilled jobs in industry. However, employers’ expectations with regard to the level of education vary both across and within 1-digit occupational groups (Figure 7). As one could expect, tertiary education (predominantly, the level of licenciat) is most often required to perform high-skilled jobs that include managers and professionals. But over 25 percent of vacancies for clerks and some vacancies for craftsmen and machine operators also require tertiary education even though these jobs are expected to have a lower skill content than jobs for managers and professionals. On the other hand, at least one in five jobs for professionals and managers requires post-secondary non-tertiary (college) or even a lower level of education.

Figure 7: ANOFM vacancies by required education and 1-digit occupational group (%)

Senior officials and managers

Professionals

Technicians and associate professionals

Clerks

Service workers and shop and market sales wor...

Skilled agricultural and fishery workers

Craft and related trades workers

Plant and machine operators and assemblers

Elementary occupations

Total

Skill

level

3Sk

illlev

el 1

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Primary Lower secondary Upper secondary VocationalPost-secondary, non-tertiary (college) Tertiary

Notes: The sample includes 9,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, excluding vacancies for the work abroad. Skill levels are defined in accordance with the ILO mapping of skill levels to occupations (Annex 2).

The educational requirements of Moldovan employers are not fully in line with the ILO conceptual framework used for classification of occupations and skill levels. According to it, occupations at the highest skill level 4 (Managers and Professionals) are expected to require tertiary education (ILO,

20

2012). Occupations at the skill level 3 (Associate professionals and technicians) are expected to require short-cycle tertiary education, that is roughly the same as post-secondary non-tertiary education in Moldovan colleges. For the competent performance in elementary occupations at skill level 1 it is enough to have primary education or the first stage of basic education (see ILO mapping of skill levels to occupations and education levels in Annex 2).

The Moldova-specific mapping between occupations and educational requirements is produced using the mode level of education, i.e. the most frequently occurring level of education required by employers in 1- and 2-digit ISCO occupational groups (Annex 5). This mapping seems to be more relevant for Moldova, at least for the segment of jobs advertised among registered unemployed, than the ILO mapping. The most unexpected results in this mapping is that tertiary education (licenciat) is required for Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals (code 34). At the same time, upper secondary education is predominantly required for Business and administration associate professionals (code 33) and Information and communications technicians (code 35) whereas vocational education is enough to work as Science and engineering associate professionals (code 31). All vacancies, including the least skilled ones, require having at least basic secondary education11 which is compulsory in Moldova. The discrepancy between actual employers’ expectations about the level of education and the ILO occupation-education mapping is also found in Slovakia by Beblavy et al. (2016c).

Despite a mandatory field about experience in the vacancy registration form, only 21 percent of vacancies in the ANOFM dataset contained requirement about non-zero experience (Figure 8). The share of vacancies not requiring any work experience decreases with the ILO-defined skill level but it is still surprisingly high for professions with the highest skill content, i.e. managers (48 percent) and professionals (61 percent). Perhaps, many employers indeed do not require relevant work experience, especially if they use the level of education as a screening factor or prefer to hire young workers without prior experience. But it might be also the case that employers wrote about the necessary experience in the description of vacancy but left an empty space in a separate line for required experience. Our analysis of information reported in the free-text job description reveals that out of 7,746 vacancies with zero experience in the mandatory field 322 vacancies had some requirement to experience (most often writing “with relevant experience”) in the free-text job description and only 345 vacancies mentioned that no experience was required. Hence, some employers could occasionally skip a line with required experience in the vacancy registration form, and zeroes in the dataset are mistakenly interpreted then as if employers specified that no (i.e. zero) experience is required.

11 Lower secondary education according to ISCED.

21

Figure 8: ANOFM vacancies by required experience and 1-digit occupational group (%)

Senior officials and managers

Professionals

Technicians and associate professionals

Clerks

Service workers and shop and market sales wor...

Skilled agricultural and fishery workers

Craft and related trades workers

Plant and machine operators and assemblers

Elementary occupations

Total

Skill

leve

l 3Sk

illle

vel 1

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

No experience 1 year 2-4 years 5+ years

Notes: The sample includes 9,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018 excluding vacancies for the work abroad. Skill levels are defined in accordance with the ILO mapping of skill levels to occupations (Annex 2). Required experience is defined here according to the mandatory field filled out by employers in a job posting form.

The most demanding jobs in terms of the necessary work experience are jobs for managers and professionals if mean, median and maximum values of required experience are compared across 2-digit occupations (Annex 6). Relevant work experience is also often required from Building and related trades workers, Metal, machinery and related trades workers, Electrical and electronic trades workers, and Drivers and mobile plant operators.

Requirements to skills and individual characteristicsNearly 80 percent of all vacancies registered in the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018 do not have any information on requirements in the vacancy description, either because there is no any information reported in the free-text job description or because this information does not contain requirements to skills.12 Hence, only a small subsample of the dataset (2,245 out of 10,806 vacancies) can be used for the analysis of required skills and individual characteristics such as age, gender, possibility to travel, etc. The number of vacancies having requirement to at least one of 13 skills determined in Box 3 is even smaller (1,030 vacancies). We suggest interpreting the results for 2-digit occupations with caution, especially if the number of vacancies with some requirements to skills is fairly small (see Annex 8). None of 1,000 vacancies for the work abroad have requirements to skills and individual characteristics, so the analysis in this section refers to jobs in Moldova.

The incidence of vacancies having requirement to at least one of 13 skills is higher among vacancies reported in the Chisinau municipality (17.7 percent) and South (15.4 percent), by firms with private, mixed or other non-foreign ownership (13 percent) and those engaged in Information and communication (68.2 percent), Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply (31 percent)

12 A lot of vacancies just repeat occupation (job title) in the job description, some include information about verification of the registered by the ANOFM and many others provide details about working conditions (place of work, working hours, type of employment, etc.).

22

and Financial and insurance activities (29.4 percent), compared to 10.5 percent in the total sample of vacancies for the work in Moldova.

Box 3: Classification of skills and indicators of skills intensity

Skills were categorized based on the analysis of skills listed in free-text job descriptions, using classification of skills from the Skills Module of the Moldovan Labor Market Forecast Survey 2016 (Rutkowski et al., 2017). The major 13 types of skills are:

1. Literacy (Romanian),2. Numeracy,3. Analytical and problem solving skills (shortcut – Problem solving),4. Work ethic and attitude towards the job (shortcut – Work ethic),5. Ability to work independently (shortcut – Working independently),6. Ability and willingness to learn new things (shortcut – Learning),7. Communication skills (shortcut – Communication),8. Ability to work in a team (shortcut – Teamwork),9. Motivation, initiative and proactivity (shortcut – Motivation),10. Technical/ professional knowledge and skills related to the work performed (shortcut – Job-specific technical),11. Computer literacy (shortcut – Computer),12. Knowledge of the Russian language (shortcut – Russian),13. Knowledge of English or other foreign languages (shortcut – English or other foreign language).

Examples of skills included in each of the above mentioned categories are provided in Annex 7.

Categorization of skills in the ANOFM dataset has been done by the author in Stata, after translation from Romanian or Russian into English by a professional interpreter with simultaneous standardization of synonymous variants of skills under guidance of the team. A relatively small number of vacancies with some text provided in the “job description” field allowed doing this task manually, i.e. without specific processing technique or software.

Variables for the skills reported in vacancies scraped from private job portals were initially generated by the IT firm and a local consultant. They developed the string searching and matching algorithm that searched words or phrases referring to requirements as defined in the dictionary of skills keywords created by the consultant under guidance of the team. And then those disaggregated skills were grouped by the author in Stata into larger categories.

In addition to 13 major skills, driving skills (driving license and a private vehicle) and requirements to age, gender and other aspects (health, habits, criminal record, hygiene rules, possibility to travel) were defined in the ANOFM dataset of vacancies. We also generated two variables for requirements to education and experience mentioned in the vacancy description, in addition to the variables in mandatory fields that have been discussed above. Numeracy and Ability/ willingness to learn new things are not mentioned in the ANOFM dataset of vacancies, so these skills are not shown in the analysis.

In the dataset of vacancies from private job portals, we used the same 13 types of skills defined above and added interaction with others, adaptability/flexibility, leadership skills, having a driving license, required education (level and field of studies, if specified) and experience.

The broad skill group – basic or higher-order cognitive, technical and socio-emotional – is then defined with the use of classification according to Cunningham and Villasenor (2016), slightly adjusted by us. The mapping of skill sets in the two data sets is provided in Annex 7.

In order to measure the occupational skills intensity, we follow the standard approach in the literature (see, among many others, Kurekova et al., 2015a, Beblavy et al., 2016c, and BGT, 2015) and calculate skill request frequencies for each 2-digit occupation, i.e. the share of vacancies in a

23

given occupation for which a particular skill is requested. The higher the indicator, the higher the share of vacancies in which the analyzed skill is requested.

Then the sum of frequencies for 11 skills in the ANOFM dataset and 16 skills in the dataset of vacancies from private job portals within each 2-digit occupation are calculated. It should be noted that the “Sum of skills” indicator should not be interpreted as the share of all vacancies within occupation as some vacancies may contain requirements to skills belonging to different groups simultaneously whereas other vacancies in the same occupation require nothing (Kurekova et al., 2015a, Beblavy et al., 2016c). For the same reason, its value may exceed 100 percent, especially in occupations with numerous requirements to different skills.

For comparison of skills intensity across 2-digit occupations, we also report the proportion of vacancies with at least one requirement to skills and the mean number of requirements to skills per vacancy within each occupation. By definition, the mean number of requirements to skills reported in vacancies within each 2-digit occupation multiplied by 100 percent is exactly the sum of skills indicator.

It is important to note that although information on skills and other job requirements is contained in a free-text job description, job postings do not include a full inventory of the skills required for a given job (Cedefop, 2019a; BGT, 2015). Employers tend to list only critical and potentially under-supplied skills and qualifications to filter out job candidates who do not possess these skills. At the same time, some basic skills that are extremely valued (e.g. literacy or numeracy) can be mentioned by relatively few employers if it is assumed that these skills are commonly available in the candidate pool.

Besides, some job-specific technical, cognitive and socio-emotional skills may be under-classified in the final dataset, especially if were expressed in complex phrases that require more sophisticated natural language processing technique than straight string matching used in our study.

There is a huge variation in the intensity of requirements across the analyzed occupations in the ANOFM sample of vacancies (see the definition of skills and used indicators in Box 3). The mean number of requirements to skills ranges from 0 for Market-oriented skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers (code 62, none of 51 vacancies included requirements to skills) to 1.65 for Handicraft and printing workers (code 73, 41.5 percent of vacancies included at least one requirement to skills) (Annex 8). The mean number of of all criteria, including requirements to education and experience shown in a free-text job description and individual characteristics, is also the largest for Handicraft and printing workers (Annex 9). Vacancies for ICT technicians (code 35) and ICT professionals (code 25) have the second and third largest mean number of requirements to skills and all criteria. Besides, these occupations are ahead of the other occupational groups in terms of the share of vacancies with at least one requirement to skills (Annex 8, Annex 9). Thus, employers providing jobs for ICT technicians and professionals are among the most demanding.

Skill intensity varies greatly even for occupations which belong to the same skill level group according to the ILO classification (ILO, 2012; Annex 2). For example, the mean number of requirements to skills for Assemblers (code 82) is almost 10 times larger than the similar indicator for Drivers and mobile plant operators (code 83). The difference in the mean number of requirements to skills is even larger between different occupational groups belonging to Professionals: from 0.06 for Health professionals (code 22) to 0.9 for ICT professionals (code 25).

A ranked list of skills helps determine the skills which are more commonly requested by employers in a given 2-digit occupation (Table 3).13 For example, Work ethic is the first most requested skill for

13 Ranking of skills is not shown for several occupational groups in which the number of vacancies with at least one requirement to skills is less than 10 (see Annex 8).

24

Protective service workers, but it is the seventh most requested skill for Stationary plant and machine operators and it is not mentioned at all in 22 out of 33 occupational groups shown in Table3.

The top five skills requested by Moldovan employers who report their vacancies to the ANOFM – foreign language, computer skills, job-specific technical skills, Russian and Romanian languages – do not include socio-emotional skills (Table 3). A relatively high ranking of Russian and Romanian can be a sign of existing gaps in literacy among lower-skilled workers, probably due to a low quality of basic secondary education and/or negative selection of students into the vocational schooling track. A relatively low ranking of socio-emotional skills in the ANOFM dataset of vacancies is in sharp contrast with findings of the analysis of the employer skills set preferences in the world and selected countries by Cunningham and Villasenor (2016). According to the Skills Module (Rutkowski et al., 2017), work ethic, motivation and teamwork are among the top skills obstacles for performance of Moldovan firms. But relatively few vacancies in the ANOFM dataset require these and other socio-emotional skills (Annex 8). This is probably because the specific segment of vacancies – predominantly low to medium-skilled manual jobs, or high-skilled jobs with low wage offers – is covered by the ANOFM. Another possible explanation is that employers are limited in the length of vacancy description in the ANOFM vacancy registration form. Socio-emotional skills are probably assessed by employers at a later stage of the recruitment process (i.e. the interview stage), so they are not considered relevant this early on. Job postings in private job portals analyzed below are very different in this respect (see Table 4 below).

Knowledge of some foreign language is the first most requested skill overall and in many occupations for managers, professionals, associate professionals, customer service clerks and even blue-collar workers. English is the most frequently requested foreign language by Moldovan employers. But other languages are also in demand, in particular Italian, Turkish, Spanish, German, and French, and rarely Latvian, Chinese, Finnish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian. These results complement the findings of the Skills Module (Rutkowski et al., 2017) according to which nearly 40 percent of surveyed employers claimed that specialists’ insufficient knowledge of English or other foreign language hampered the firm’s performance.

Computer skills are the second most requested skills overall and the top requested skills in vacancies for legal, social and cultural professionals, clerks, protective services workers, and even in some lower-skilled occupational groups (Table 3). Out of 338 vacancies reporting computer skills among requirements, 177 vacancies (i.e. over 50 percent) are posted by a new private enterprise engaged in manufacturing of electrical and electronic equipment for motor vehicles, and the overwhelming majority of them are for machine operators and some other blue-collar workers. Basic computer skills, including knowledge of word processing in Microsoft Word and processing spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel, are commonly expected across a broad range of occupations which do not require more advanced computer skills.

Table 3: Ranking of skills requested by employers in vacancies reported to the ANOFM by a 2-digit occupational group

Occupational group (2-digit ISCO-2008)

Engl

ish

or o

ther

FL

Com

pute

r

Job-

spec

ific t

echn

ical

Russ

ian

Lite

racy

(Ro

man

ian)

Team

wor

k

Moti

vatio

n

Wor

k et

hic

Com

mun

icati

on

Wor

king

inde

pend

ently

Prob

lem

solv

ing

% o

f vac

anci

es w

ith a

t lea

st

one

requ

irem

ent t

o sk

ills

Overall 1 2 3 4 4 6 7 8 8 10 11 9.5

25

Administrative and commercial managers 2 3 1 5 4 6 32.8Production and specialized services managers 1 2 3 5 4 5 5 23.6Hospitality, retail and other services managers 1 2 4 2 4 4 4 4 23.3Science and engineering professionals 2 3 1 4 19.1Teaching professionals 1 5 4 2 3 6 6 27.4Business and administration professionals 3 2 1 5 4 7 5 7 24.4ICT professionals 1 2 3 5 3 5 7 53.3Legal, social and cultural professionals 2 1 2 5 4 5.5Science and engineering associate professionals 2 3 1 5 5 3 5 13.6Business and administration associate professionals 1 2 6 3 4 4 6 6 17.7Information and communications technicians 1 2 3 72.4General and keyboard clerks 6 1 3 3 3 2 18.8Customer services clerks 1 2 4 4 4 4 3 45.7Personal service workers 3 1 6 3 2 5 7.9Sales workers 2 1 4 2 8.9Personal care workers 2 2 1 4 7.9Protective services workers 3 1 7 4 4 4 1 8.8Building and related trades workers, excluding electricians 1 3 2 14.7

Metal, machinery and related trades workers 1 16.5Handicraft and printing workers 1 1 7 1 1 1 6 41.5Electrical and electronic trades workers 2 1 3 27.3Food processing, wood working, garment and other craft and related trades workers 3 3 7 2 3 3 1 2.0

Stationary plant and machine operators 1 1 7 1 1 1 6 7 21.7Assemblers 2 2 2 1 2 6 8.3Cleaners and helpers 1 2 5.1Agricultural, forestry and fishery laborers 1 2 12.2Laborers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transport 1 1 1 1 1 6 7 7.4

Refuse workers and other elementary workers 1 2 3 4 5.5

Notes: The initial sample includes 9,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, excluding vacancies for the work abroad. Ranking is based on the skill’s request frequencies presented in Annex 8. Cells are empty if no vacancy within an occupation required a given skill. Several occupational groups are not shown in the table because of a small sample size (less than 10 vacancies having skills requirements, see Annex 8) but they are counted in “Overall”. These are: Chief executives, senior officials and legislators (code 11), Health professionals (code 22), Health associate professionals (code 32), Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals (code 34), Numerical and material recording clerks (code 43), Other clerical support workers (code 44), Market-oriented skilled agricultural workers (code 61), Market-oriented skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers (code 62), Drivers and mobile plant operators (code 83), Food preparation assistants (code 94) and Street and related sales and service workers (code 95).

Job-specific technical skills are the third most frequently requested skills overall and the top requested skills in 11 out of 33 2-digit ISCO occupational groups (Table 3). Examples of such skills vary from accounting skills and knowledge of the relevant legislation for Administrative and commercial managers, Business and administration professionals, and Numerical and material recording clerks to proficiency in some craft documented by the qualification category (Annex 10).

Analysis of other requirements in addition to the main set of skills reveals that a lot of vacancies, especially in higher-skilled occupational groups, specify requirements to education and experience in addition to separate mandatory fields (Annex 9). This is probably done by employers to stress the importance of required education (level and field) and relevant experience for job seekers to be qualified for a given position. Having a driving license is often requested in vacancies for drivers and sometimes for hospitality, retail and other services managers, business and administration professionals and ICT professionals. 22 vacancies, or 0.2 percent of all vacancies in the sample,

26

require specific gender, with males preferred for physically demanding jobs (e.g. laborers in retail trade or agriculture, and females preferred as cooks, food processing trades, waiters, office cleaners, automation engineers or machine operators. Besides, 38 vacancies, or about 0.4 percent of all vacancies, include some requirement to the age of applicants (e.g. older than 18, under 30/45/55). Finally, 134 vacancies put other requirements such as compliance with hygiene and sanitary rules, good eyesight/ health, physically fit, without bad habits and without criminal record. One of those vacancies mentioned the possibility to travel (for a personnel professional) and another one required female without young children (for a shop salesperson). As most of these requirements are not directly related to productive characteristics of workers, they can be defined as discriminatory and therefore such that violate Article 14 of the new Law on Employment of Population (effective since February 2019).14

Wage offer vs. requirements to skillsNearly all firms in the ANOFM dataset of vacancies report the minimum and maximum wage offer for a vacant job, but roughly one in ten vacancies offers wage of 0 or 1 MDL (Annex 11). In a subsample of vacancies with more adequate values for wage offers, median for the minimum offer (2,800 MDL) is slightly above the statutory monthly minimum wage in the real sector of the economy effective till May 2018 in Moldova (2,380 MDL). The average value (4,693 MDL) is substantially higher than the statutory monthly minimum wage, mainly due to 1,000 vacancies for the work abroad that offer at least 20,000 MDL. After excluding these vacancies, the average value for the minimum wage offer decreases to 2,943 MDL (Annex 11).

After excluding vacancies with 0 or 1 MDL wage offers and vacancies for the work abroad, there are still a lot of vacancies which offered wages below the statutory minimum wage for the real sector at of 2,380 MDL in early 2018 (Figure 9). This implies that employers belonging to the real sector either do pay less than the statutory monthly wage or misreport the actual level of wages. As the statutory minimum wage in the public sector (so-called budget sector) is lower than in the real sector, a large share of vacancies reported by organizations and firms with public ownership and those engaged in education, public administration and health care and social work activities offer less than 2380 MDL (Figure 9).

14 According to part 2 of Article 14 of the Law on Employment (http://lex.justice.md/ru/376758), job offerings and job announcements may not contain discriminatory elements based on the criteria of race, nationality, ethnic origin, language, religion, beliefs, sex, age, disabilities, attitudes, political affiliation, wealth, social origin or any other criteria.

27

Figure 9: Proportion of ANOFM vacancies with wage offer below 2380 MDL by the ownership type, region and sector (%)

Public

Foreign, joint venture

North

South

Agriculture, forestry and fishing

Manufacturing

Water supply; sewerage, waste management

Wholesale and retail trade

Accommodation and food service activities

Financial and insurance activities

Education

Other service activities

Owne

rshi

pRe

gion

Sect

or

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Notes: The sample includes 8,745 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, with the minimum wage offer above 1 MDL and excluding vacancies for the work abroad.

Analysis of the median wage offer versus the intensity of requirements to skills and individual characteristics across 2-digit occupational groups reveals no strong correlation between the level of wage and requirements (Figure 10).15 For example, the median value of maximum wage offer is the highest among Science and engineering professionals (code 21), but the mean number of requirements to skills and individual characteristics reported in vacancies belonging to this occupational groups is relatively small. On the other hand, the median wage offer in the most demanding occupational group (Handicraft and printing workers, code 73) is lower than in many other occupational groups. Hence, one cannot argue that the more demanding vacancies in terms of skills and other criteria in a given occupation, the higher wage offer in this occupation. 16 Similarly, correlation between the number of requirements to job candidates specified in a vacancy description and a minimum wage offer in a given vacancy is insignificant and even negative when the vacancy-level data is used.

The ANOFM dataset of vacancies is biased to vacancies with low wage offers that do not attract appropriately qualified job seekers. Only in one out of 38 2-digit occupational groups – Information and communications technology professionals (code 25) – the mean value of the maximum wage offer is above the average wage in Moldova in the first quarter of 2018 (MDL 5906.5), and there are no occupations with the median wage offer above 5000 MDL (Figure 10). The maximum value of the

15 The coefficient of correlation between the median value of the maximum wage offer and the mean number of requirements to skills/all criteria is 0.30 and 0.38, respectively. The coefficient of correlation between the median value of the minimum wage offer and the mean number of requirements to skills/all criteria is 0.23 and 0.32, respectively.16 We also checked the relationship between wages and skills demands across 2-digit occupational groups, conditional on firms reporting at least one requirement in a job description and offering wage above 1 MDL (2,007 vacancies). The relationship is even weaker than in the full sample: the coefficient of correlation between the median value of the minimum wage offer and the mean number of requirements to skills/all criteria is minus 0.09 and plus 0.07, respectively.

28

maximum wage offer in the most popular occupational group in the ANOFM data set – Garment and related pattern-makers and cutters (code 7532) – is 6000 MDL, which is slightly above the national average, while the median value of the maximum wage offer for this occupation is only 3500 MDL.

Figure 10: Median of the minimum and maximum wage offers in ANOFM vacancies vs. intensity of skills requirements by 2-digit occupational group

11 12 13 14 21 22 23 24 25 26 31 32 33 34 35 41 42 43 44 51 52 53 54 61 62 71 72 73 74 75 81 82 83 91 92 93 94 96

Corr

elati

on -

skill

s0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Mean number of requirements, 11 skills (right axis)Mean number of requirements, all criteria (right axis)Min wage offer (median)Max wage offer (median)Series5

Occupation (2-digit ISCO code)

MDL

Notes: The sample includes 9,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, excluding vacancies for the work abroad. Average wage offers are estimated for the subsample of vacancies excluding observations with the wage offer equal to 0 or 1 MDL. Mean number of requirements to skills and to all criteria are taken from Annex 8 and Annex 9, respectively. Names of occupational groups corresponding to 2-digit ISCO codes can be found in Annex 8. A dotted line corresponds to the average wage in Moldova in the first quarter of 2018 (MDL 5906.5), according to the NBS.

The regression-based decomposition of the variance in the minimum wage offer in vacancies reported to the ANOFM shows that variation in wage offers is largely determined by job characteristics such as occupation, economic sector, region and the type of business ownership (Annex 12). These factors contribute to variation in wage offers substantially more than the expected level of education, experience and number of requirements to skills.17 However, almost 50 percent of the variance in wage offers remains unexplained. This can be interpreted as a sign of some arbitrariness in setting wages by employers or misreporting of actual wage offers to the ANOFM. But in order to understand better the determinants of wage offers reported by Moldovan employers in job postings and the returns to specific skill requirements, a more detailed and rigorous study should be done in the future.

17 Using job postings for professionals in the US, Deming and Kahn (2018) get similar results: once the detailed controls such as location of firms and occupational groups are included in the model, skills measures become less important in explaining variation in wages. Nevertheless, the authors argue that “the prevalence of advertisements for high-level job skills is positively correlated with relative wages across labor markets and performance differences across firms, even after controlling for education and experience requirements and detailed occupation and industry codes”.

29

2.2. Vacancies from private job portalsData descriptionIn order to supplement the analysis of vacancies reported to the public employment agency (ANOFM) and compare the skills demand of ANOFM vacancies to that of the private job portals, we examine vacancies posted to two leading private job portals in Moldova during December 2017 – February 2018 (Box 4). The final sample used in the analysis includes 22,891 vacancies. The bulk of vacancies (about 84 percent) were posted in January (Annex 14), but it is difficult to interpret whether it is because employers actively posted vacancies in the first month of the year,18 or simply due to peculiarities of the scraping procedure.

Box 4: Description of the dataset of vacancies from private job portals

Information about vacancies was scraped in December 2017 – February 2018 from two private job portals (www.rabota.md and joblist.md) which are among the largest in Moldova.19 Even though employers are free to choose the channels and job portals to advertise available jobs, it is a valid concern that the types of jobs posted in these particular job portals are not representative of all job openings in Moldova.

According to information from the chosen job portals, employers can post information about few vacancies without any charge: 1 vacancy per day effective 45 days at joblist.md and 3 vacancies per week for registered users at rabota.md. If they want to promote their vacancies to a higher class (e.g. VIP-vacancies, premium or urgent vacancies), have access to the contact information shown in pre-selected CVs or use matching and recruitment services, they need to pay a fee which depends on the type of service, number of vacancies and duration of their posting.

The IT firm doing the scraping exercise applied an algorithm to avoid duplications of vacancies posted to these two competing job sites, but the problem of repetitive job postings has not been fully resolved. The team also tried to separate vacancies for the work abroad (3212 observations) and short-time side jobs (1237 observations)20, as well as clean the main dataset from ‘noise’ including advertisement of equipment leasing, private tutoring or training (1449 observations). However, the final sample still includes some vacancies for the work abroad and short-time side jobs which is difficult to filter out.

Before processing of the dataset by a local consultant the original dataset included the following entries (variables): vacancy id, name of job portal, the date of vacancy posting, company name, category and subcategory (a mix of economic activities and occupational groups developed and used by a given job portal), job title (occupation) provided as a non-standardized string variable, a free-text job description in Romanian, Russian or English, and categorical variables for region, required

18For comparison, vacancies reported to the ANOFM are almost evenly distributed across months of registration (see Annex 1).19 Rabota.md and joblist.md are ranked much higher than other Moldovan job sites in global ranking of internet traffic and engagement over the past 90 days. For example, in June 2019 rabota.md was ranked 287,918 and joblist.md was ranked 248,013 compared to 1,692,319 for piatamuncii.md or 2,011,065 for alljobs.md (https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/rabota.md). According to available web popularity rankings among job boards in Moldova, rabota.md is also ranked high (https://www.jobboardfinder.com/jobboard-rabotamd-moldova, https://www.jobrank.org/md/job-boards.htm). The audience overlap (i.e. the share of the same visitors and search keywords) between rabota.md and joblist.md is 51.7 percent as of June, 2019 ( https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/rabota.md ) .20 These observations usually did not include information about sector, company, skill requirements and job description, having only an offer to earn some amount of money within a short period.

30

education and experience, work schedule and wage offer (in MDL, EUR or USD), and additional requirements to languages (available in one of two job portals).

Using a word/ phrase-search algorithm with creation of a dictionary and correspondence tables, a local consultant added several important entries: 3-digit ISCO code(s) corresponding to a job title (occupation); required level of education, experience and skills based on information provided in a free-text job description.

One of the major drawbacks of the final dataset shared by the data-processing team is that many occupations did not have any ISCO code attached and did not specify requirements to skills even though this information appeared in the description of vacancies. Assuming that non-coding of requirements is random across occupations or sectors, the figures on the intensity of skill requirements provided below can be interpreted as lower bounds for true indicators.

Besides, important information about job-specific (technical) skills was extracted from the description of vacancies only for several occupations. To create the variable with job-specific technical skills for all vacancies, a research assistant extracted information "manually" using a Google Translate for translation from Romanian into English and creating a dictionary of technical skills to automate the process.

Unlike the ANOFM data set, the dataset of vacancies from private job portals does not include information about the type of ownership, and the suggested categories for the level of required education differ from the common classification of education in Moldova. Moreover, private job portals use their own classification of economic activities mixed with occupational groups (e.g. Agriculture or Trade along with Lawyers or Drivers). The variable on economic activity (sector) in line with the Moldovan classification was created by us using a tentative mapping with categories used by two job portals (shown in Annex 13).

In addition, job titles (occupations) are initially provided by employers in a free manner, without correspondence to any classification of occupations. The algorithm developed by the team matched only 84 percent of vacancies in the sample with some ISCO 3-digit code, and this automatic matching is associated with large classification errors. Additional coding of popular occupations with missing ISCO codes by the author increased the share of vacancies with ISCO code to 88 percent. This implies that more than one in ten vacancies in the sample does not fall into any occupational group.

Due to possible misclassification errors the quantitative analysis at 2-digit ISCO levels is subject to criticism, and therefore the results of the analysis should be treated with appropriate caution.

Job characteristics: region, sector, occupation, wage offers and work scheduleUnlike vacancies reported to the ANOFM and formal wage employment, the regional structure of vacancies from online job portals is highly skewed to the Chisinau municipality (Figure 11). Vacancies from companies located in the Chisinau municipality comprise over 92 percent of all vacancies (21,116 vacancies). The second popular location is Balti having 800 vacancies in the dataset (or 3.5 percent of all vacancies), followed by Orhei with 132 vacancies (0.6 percent). All other locations have less than 100 vacancies each. Cedefop (2019b) finds significant regional disparities in the use of private job portals in many European countries including Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Latvia. Private job portals are more commonly used in densely populated urban areas in view of higher internet penetration rate and better digital skills among the urban population, job openings in fast-growing modern sectors that usually require higher qualifications, and growing recruitment difficulties that can force employers to diversify recruiting channels (Cedefop, 2019a). Furthermore, companies in less developed and rural areas might prefer to use ANOFM because of full service package free-of-charge and the wide geographic

31

spread of its offices. On the other hand, employers from the capital region are more likely to use private online job portals to increase the visibility of job openings and reach the right target group quickly.

Figure 11: Vacancies from private job portals and formal wage employment by region (%)

Mun.Chisinau

North

Center

South

T.A.U. Gagauzia

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Formal wage employment RABOTA.MD JOBLIST.MD

Percentage of vacancies/ formal wage employment

Source: Wage employment: Firm-level data on 31 December 2017, NBS online data bank (series: Number of employees on 31 December by Districts/Regions, Years and Sex), Vacancies from private job portals: author’s estimations.

Notes: The sample includes 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018. Regions refer to development regions in accordance with the Law no. 438-XVI from 28.12.2006 on regional development in Moldova (http://www.statistica.md/pageview.php?l=en&idc=349&id=5091).

The largest sector in the dataset of vacancies from both private job portals is the combined sector of various professional, technical, administrative and support service activities (Figure 12). However, its share is likely to be overestimated at the expense of other sectors because representatives of categories included in this sector – Design; Jurisprudence; Jurisprudence and Insurance; Marketing, advertising, PR; Network marketing; Foreign languages; Managers; Psychologists; Staff, HR; Office workers; Security and safety (see Annex 13) – might in fact belong to various sectors. The other leading sectors differ between the analyzed job portals: at rabota.md these are Industry, ICT, Transportation and storage, Other service activities, Trade and Financial and insurance activities which make up together almost 50 percent of vacancies; at joblist.md vacancies belonging to Trade, Transportation and storage, Accommodation and food service activities, Arts, entertainment and recreation, and Industry comprise over 56 percent of all vacancies (Figure 12). Thus, companies representing modern fast-growing sectors seem to use rabota.md relatively more often than joblist.md. At the same time, few companies looking for workers in agriculture, public administration, education or healthcare choose to advertise their vacancies on online private job portals preferring more traditional recruitment channels.

32

Figure 12: Vacancies from private job portals and formal wage employment by sector (%)

AgricultureIndustry

ConstructionTrade

Transportation and storageAccommodation and food service activities

Information and communicationFinancial and insurance activities

Real estate activitiesProfessional, administrative, support service activities

Public administrationEducation

Health careArts, entertainment and recreation

Other service activitiesActivities of households as employers

Work for studentsWork from home

Work abroadTop management

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Formal wage employment RABOTA.MD JOBLIST.MD

Percentage of vacancies/ formal wage employment

Source: Wage employment: Firm-level data on 31 December 2017, NBS online data bank (series: Number of employees by Economic activities, Years, Forms of ownership, Sex and Indicators), Vacancies from private job portals: author’s estimations.

Notes: The sample includes 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018. Industry includes Mining and quarrying, Manufacturing, Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply and Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities. Mapping between Moldovan classification of economic activities (sectors) and categories used in private job portals is provided in Annex 13.

The most popular occupational group in the total sample of vacancies from private jobs portals is Professionals, mainly due to vacancies posted at rabota.md (Annex 14). At the same time, roughly one in four vacancies posted at joblist.md was classified as Service workers and shop and market sales workers (Figure 13). Besides, blue-collar jobs and elementary occupations are relatively more likely to be posted at joblist.md whereas white-collar jobs 21 are more common among vacancies posted at rabota.md. This important discrepancy between two job portals is fully in line with the difference in sectoral composition of vacancies from these portals discussed above. Comparing the occupational structure of vacancies to that of LFS-based wage employment (Figure 13), we can see that online job vacancies for white-collar jobs tend to be more common than for blue-collar jobs. This is a typical finding in many developed countries where employers tend to use private online job portals for advertising vacancies either for higher-skilled jobs or for occupations affected by shortages of skilled labor (Cedefop, 2019b). However, it should be taken into account that 12 percent of all vacancies in our dataset did not get any occupational code (Annex 14) whereas other 21 According to the OECD Glossary of statistical terms (https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=4919), white-collar workers are Office, clerical, administrative, sales, professional, and technical employees, as distinguished from production and maintenance employees who are usually referred to as blue-collar workers.

33

job titles might be improperly classified into ISCO occupational groups, so these findings about the occupational structure of vacancies from private job portals should be treated with caution.

Figure 13: Vacancies from private job portals and wage employment by 1-digit occupational group (%)

Senior officials and managers

Professionals

Technicians and associate professionals

Clerks

Service workers and shop and market sales workers

Skilled agricultural and fishery workers

Craft and related trades workers

Plant and machine operators and assemblers

Elementary occupations

Skill

leve

l 4Sk

illle

vel 3

Skill

leve

l 2Sk

illle

vel 1

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Wage employment RABOTA.MD JOBLIST.MD

Percentage of vacancies/ wage employment

Source: Wage employment: LFS in 2017, NBS online data bank (series: Employed population by status in employment, economic activities, years, sex, area and occupations); Vacancies from private job portals: author’s estimations.

Notes: The sample includes 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018. Occupational groups are based on ISCO-2008 1-digit categories. Skill levels are defined in accordance with the ILO mapping of skill levels to occupations (Annex 2).

The list of top 20 occupations in the sample of vacancies from private job portals starts from business and administration associate professionals, followed by sales and personal service workers and higher-skilled occupations (Figure 14, Annex 15). According to the analysis of Cedefop (2019b) in European countries, growing numbers of vacancies in occupations requiring high levels of technical skills such as engineering and ICT increase the importance of online recruitment channels and causes a disproportionate number of ICT jobs advertised on private job portals. As Figure 14 and Annex 15 show, this is not the case in Moldova where less than 3 percent of surveyed vacancies are for ICT professionals or associate professionals (codes 25 and 35). This suggests that either the ICT sector is not that developed in Moldova as in other countries or that jobs for ICT specialists are more widely advertised on specialized websites than on job portals covering all sectors and professional areas. The list of top 20 occupations in the sample of vacancies from private job portals also includes three occupations belonging to the lowest-skill group (elementary occupations) that together make up over 6 percent of all vacancies (Figure 14, Annex 15). This is a sign that potential employers are quite optimistic about the readiness of low-skilled job seekers to use the internet in their job search or that in this way employers seek to target younger and more flexible employees.

34

Figure 14: Top 20 occupations in the sample of vacancies from private job portals (%)

Business and administration associate professionals

Personal service workers

Science and engineering professionals

Legal, social and cultural professionals

Cleaners and helpers

ICT professionals

Food processing, wood working, garment and other craft and related trades workers

Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals

Numerical and material recording clerks

Teaching professionals

0 2 4 6 8 10 12Percentage of vacancies

Notes: The sample includes 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018. Occupations are classified at 2-digit ISCO level. Green bars refer to Skill level 4 occupations, light green bars – Skill level 3 occupations, blue bars – Skill level 2 occupations, and dark blue – Skill level 1 occupations. Skill levels are defined in accordance with the ILO mapping of skill levels to occupations (Annex 2).

Although the starting salary level is expected to be reported by employers advertising vacancies via private job portals, the majority of vacancies have either missing value (55 percent of vacancies at joblist.md) or use the cliché ‘negotiable’ (67 percent of vacancies at rabota.md). Cedefop (2019b) finds similar situation in many European countries explaining it by the unwillingness of employers to limit their ability to negotiate salary with job candidates taking into account their skills and work experience, especially for higher-level occupations. Besides, the practice of not disclosing wages also helps avoid tensions with already employed workers and hide information from competitors. As Figure 15 shows, information on the salary level is more frequently mentioned for personal care workers, protective services workers, cleaners and helpers and other lower-skilled positions. Reported salary levels often look weird – either too small (e.g. 1 MDL, USD or EUR) or too large (e.g. 111,111 EUR), and therefore we do not provide any statistics on the mean or median salary levels.

35

Figure 15: Vacancies from private job portals reporting some starting salary level by 2-digit occupational group (%)

Administrative and commercial managersHospitality, retail and other services managers

Health professionalsBusiness and administration professionals

Legal, social and cultural professionalsHealth associate professionals

Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionalsGeneral and keyboard clerks

Numerical and material recording clerksSales workers

Protective services workersMetal, machinery and related trades workers

Electrical and electronic trades workersStationary plant and machine operators

Drivers and mobile plant operatorsAgricultural, forestry and fishery labourers

Food preparation assistantsUnspecified

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Below 2380 MDL Above 2380 MDL

Percentage of vacancies

Notes: The sample includes 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018. Wage offers reported in EUR or USD were converted into MDL using the mid-January 2018 exchange rate. The minimum offer in the sample is 0 MDL, and the maximum offer is 2,309,998 MDL. Occupations are classified at 2-digit ISCO level. Other clerical support workers (code 44), Market-oriented skilled agricultural workers (code 61), and Market-oriented skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers (code 62) are removed from the figure because of a small sample size but they are counted in “Total”.

Although full-time employment is considered the standard in Moldova,22 many vacancies advertised on private job portals, especially at joblist.md, offer alternative patterns of work in terms of space and time (Figure 16). One in four jobs posted at joblist.md allows for flexible working hours, compared to less than 2 percent of such jobs in the set of surveyed vacancies advertised on rabota.md. Over 14 percent of vacancies at joblist.md and nearly 6.5 percent of vacancies at rabota.md offer shift work. Over 5 percent of vacancies at both portals are for part-time employment, and nearly 2 percent of vacancies are for remote or freelance work. As Figure 17 reveals, non-standard patterns of work prevail in vacancies for food preparation assistants, health professionals, protective services workers, personal service workers, teaching specialists, cleaners and helpers. Handicraft and printing workers, ICT professionals, Legal, social, cultural and related professionals associate professionals, Hospitality, retail and other services managers and Sales

22 According to the NBS LFS-based data on employment, 94.4 percent of employed individuals reported about working full-time, predominantly 40 hours or more per week (Statistical databank, Social statistics, “Employed population by Duration of the working week, Working program, Years, Sex, Area and Age groups, 2017”).

36

workers are the occupational groups in which freelance or remote work is more common than in the total sample of vacancies.

Figure 16: Vacancies from private job portals by work schedule (%)

Full-time

Part-time

Flexible

Freelance/ remote

Shift

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

RABOTA.MD JOBLIST.MD

Percentage of vacancies

Notes: The sample includes 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018.

Figure 17: Vacancies from private job portals by non-standard work schedule and 2-digit occupational group (%)

Food preparation assistantsProtective services workers

Teaching professionalsHealth professionals

Personal care workersCustomer services clerks

Refuse workers and other elementary workersLegal, social, cultural and related associate professionals

Legal, social and cultural professionalsICT professionals

Business and administration professionalsProduction and specialised services managers

Building and related trades workers, excluding electriciansScience and engineering associate professionals

Laborers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transportNumerical and material recording clerks

Science and engineering professionalsAdministrative and commercial managers

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Part-time Flexible Freelance/remote Shift

Percentage of vacancies

Notes: The sample includes 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018. Occupations are classified at 2-digit ISCO level. Occupations are sorted by the frequency of non-standard (i.e. not full-time) work schedule.

37

Such alternative patterns of work are attractive employment opportunities for those wishing to reconcile paid employment with studies, main job, family obligations or other activities. However, non-standard forms of employment are associated with employment and income insecurity, inadequate social security coverage, possible violations of fundamental rights at work, low pay, poor work-life balance, and high occupational safety and health risks (ILO, 2016). Firms that rely heavily on non-standard working arrangements can gain from flexibility and lower labor costs in the short-term, but they can face productivity losses in the long-term due to erosion of firm-specific skills and low investment in productivity-enhancing technologies (ILO, 2016). The spreading of freelance/ remote work or flexible working hours causes employers to adapt their human resource strategies. They shift away from recruitment of workers based on their formal qualifications and in-house training of employees to a careful selection of candidates with the right set of skills and work attitudes (Cedefop, 2019b).

Required education and experienceSlightly more than 55 percent of vacancies posted to two private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018 contained information about the required level of education specified in the categorical variable (Annex 14). Of those, the majority of jobs advertised on rabota.md required tertiary education, whereas some level of secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education was more commonly demanded in vacancies posted at joblist.md. Meanwhile, nearly 30 percent of vacancies posted at joblist.md require “No education” which is expected in view of the occupational and sectoral composition of vacancies discussed above. However, the unexpected finding is that over half of all vacancies posted at rabota.md require “Any education”, and about 4 percent of vacancies have empty field for the level of education. One of the possible explanations is that many vacancies for medium- and lower-skilled jobs do not require specific formal education, assuming that most job applicants have at least lower secondary education which is compulsory in Moldova.23 An alternative explanation suggested in Del Carpio et al. (2017) for Ukraine is that, in view of irrelevance of education to current labor market needs and widespread skills mismatch, employers seeking for highly qualified workers might prefer to mention highly valued skills rather than availability of diplomas of uncertain quality. Despite the similar problems in Moldova, 24 the latter explanation tends to be true only for some high-skilled occupations such as ICT technicians and professionals and Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals (Figure 18). In many other occupations for managers, professionals and associate professionals education remains one of the most important credentials – tertiary education is mainly required from candidates applying to positions of managers and professionals and post-secondary non-tertiary education (i.e. a college degree) is commonly demanded at positions for associate professionals (Figure 18).

23 928 out of 10,027 vacancies with “no education”, “any education” or “unspecified” in the categorical variable for education had requirement to the level of education in a text job description. This implies that some employers ignore filling all fields in the vacancy ad but they do care about education credentials.24 The share of Moldovan firms that cited skills deficits as a major or severe constraint to growth was one of the highest in the ECA (World Bank, 2016b). One of the explanations suggested by authors is that the national education system focuses on irrelevant specializations and/or is not adapting to the demands of modern firms and markets. The LFS-2017 data supports a widespread mismatch between education of employed individuals and their occupations: only 56.5% of workers with a university diploma (tertiary education) and 41.4% of workers with a college diploma (post-secondary no-tertiary education in Moldova) reported that their education, both level and field of studies, corresponded to occupation.

38

Figure 18: Vacancies from private job portals by required education and 2-digit occupational group (%)

Labourers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transportRefuse workers and other elementary workers

Food preparation assistantsProtective services workers

UnspecifiedLegal, social, cultural and related associate professionals

Drivers and mobile plant operatorsElectrical and electronic trades workers

TotalLegal, social and cultural professionals

Personal service workersStationary plant and machine operators

Business and administration associate professionalsScience and engineering professionals

Administrative and commercial managersBusiness and administration professionals

General and keyboard clerksTeaching professionals

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Secondary Post-secondary, non-tertiary Tertiary No education, Any, Unspecified

Notes: The sample includes 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018. Occupations are classified at 2-digit ISCO level. Occupations are sorted by the frequency of vacancies with unspecified level of education (including entries with No education and Any education). Other clerical support workers (code 44), Market-oriented skilled agricultural workers (code 61), and Market-oriented skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers (code 62) are removed from the figure because of a small sample size but they are counted in “Total”.

If employers require tertiary or vocational secondary education, they sometimes also require specific field of studies or even several possible fields of studies described in a free-text job description. The most frequently mentioned field of studies is Economics (Annex 16). It is mentioned alone as well as together with various fields such as Finance, banking and Insurance, Law, Accounting and taxation, Marketing and advertising, Management and administration (including logistics), Engineering trades, Agriculture and many other fields that are not related to Economics. The major occupational groups in which degree in Economics is required are Business and administration professionals and associate professionals, Legal, social and cultural professionals and Science and engineering professionals.

Specific work experience in years is requested in less than 40 percent of all surveyed vacancies posted to private job portals (Annex 14). Like in the case of required education, the bulk of vacancies posted at joblist.md require “No experience”, and the overwhelming majority of vacancies at rabota.md have requirement about “Any experience” or an empty field for required experience. This suggests that many employers consider it insignificant to demand some job experience from applicants probably because they see work experience as a bad proxy for the position-specific skills or because they want to attract the attention of young professionals or even students without

39

relevant work experience. But some employers tend to put requirements to experience in their job description uploaded to the job portal ignoring categorical fields in the vacancy ad: 3,484 out of 13,775 vacancies have “no experience”, “any experience” or “unspecified” in the categorical variable for experience but they specified some requirement to experience in a text job description.

Strikingly, positions for blue-collar and service workers are often more demanding in terms of relevant work experience than higher-skilled jobs (Figure 19). Increased participation in tertiary education and outmigration of skilled blue-collar workers leads to labor shortages in Moldova, and employers struggle to find experienced craftsmen, operators and assemblers. On the other hand, employers seeking for professionals are more likely to consider job candidates who do not have experience but who are willing to learn quickly and possess other important skills.

Figure 19: Vacancies from private job portals by required experience and 2-digit occupational group (%)

Labourers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transport

Handicraft and printing workers

Sales workers

Protective services workers

Legal, social and cultural professionals

Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals

Production and specialised services managers

Business and administration professionals

Science and engineering professionals

Administrative and commercial managers

Drivers and mobile plant operators

Stationary plant and machine operators

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

<2 years 2-5 years 5+ years No experience, Any, Unspecified

Notes: The sample includes 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018. Occupations are classified at 2-digit ISCO level. Occupations are sorted by the frequency of vacancies with unspecified experience (including entries with No experience and Any experience). Other clerical support workers (code 44), Market-oriented skilled agricultural workers (code 61), and Market-oriented skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers (code 62) are removed from the figure because of a small sample size but they are counted in “Total”.

Requirements to skills and individual characteristicsDemand for skills, proxied by the percentage of job postings in which certain skills are called for, varies from one occupational group to another (Annex 17). In general, the higher the skill level of the job (proxied by ISCO 2-digit occupational group), the higher is the intensity of requirements reported by employers in vacancies. However, there are notable exceptions from this rule:

40

handicraft and printing workers with unexpectedly high indicators of the mean number of requirements to skills and to all criteria, on the one hand, and health and teaching professionals with a lower than expected indicators of the intensity of requirements, on the other hand (Annex 17, Annex 18). This might be due to differences in the relative credibility of education credentials in these occupations: university degree in medicine or education might be a credible sign that a job applicant can do the relevant job well, whereas education of handicraft workers does not signal about the necessary hard and soft skills and therefore employers need to specify requirements to skills in the job ad.

Although the ranking of skills is unique in each 2-digit occupational group, the list of the most valued skills is mainly limited to Job-specific technical, Work ethic, Romanian and Russian languages, Computer literacy, Communication, English or other foreign language (Table 4). Other skills such as Working independently, Interaction with others, Motivation, Teamwork, Learning, Leadership, Problem solving, and Adaptability are requested much less frequently, and there are several occupations in which some of these skills are not requested at all.

Job-specific technical skills is the most popular type of skills required in over 30 percent of all vacancies examined. Across occupations, this percentage varies from 1.4 percent of vacancies for Food preparation assistants to 79 percent of vacancies for ICT professionals. In fact, in 11 out of 30 occupations shown in Table 4 job-specific technical skills are the most demanded skills. As expected, these skills are often very specific to occupations, but some skills such as proficiency in “1-C” Accounting”, Photoshop, CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator and other graphics software, knowledge of labor and tax law, accounting and marketing principles, sales and SMM skills seem to be quite universal skills valued in many occupations (Annex 19). High incidence of requirements to education and experience, which are shown in a free-text job description in addition to structured information in filter questions about the required level of education and experience, stresses the importance of hard skills and formal qualifications in the Moldovan labor market (Annex 18).

Work ethic – the second most demanded skill – is called for in 30.2 percent of vacancies (Annex17). This is line with findings of Rutkowski et al. (2017), according to which over 40 percent of Moldovan employers see work ethic as one of the top three skills the lack of which constrains their firm’s performance. Across occupations, work ethic is demanded in 13 percent of vacancies for Food preparation assistants to 48 percent of vacancies for Agricultural, forestry and fishery laborers. It is the top demanded skill in 12 out of 20 medium- to low-skilled occupations (Table 4). This suggests that work ethic is both highly valued and under-supplied among low-skilled workers and therefore Moldovan employers want to emphasize the importance of being responsible, diligent, disciplined, hard-working, honest, etc. in order to be qualified for the job.

Knowledge of the Romanian and/or Russian language is also highly ranked in Moldova. Romanian is requested in about 29 percent of vacancies overall, varying from low values in low-skilled occupations to 66 percent in Administrative and commercial managers (Annex 17). The share of vacancies requiring Russian varies from 0.7 percent for Food preparation assistants to 66 percent in Administrative and commercial managers. As Romanian and Russian languages are predominantly demanded in higher-skilled jobs, our arguments to explain a high ranking of these languages in the ANOFM dataset (gaps in literacy among lower-skilled workers, low quality of basic secondary education and negative selection of students to vocational track) are not appropriate. We expect that the language requirements in the vacancies posted to private job portals mainly refer to the ability to speak and write fluently in both languages, being able to switch from one to another depending on the preferences of clients. Information about required languages based on categorical variables available for vacancies posted at joblist.md supports this argument: 46.4 percent of surveyed vacancies required knowledge of both languages compared to 8.8 percent of vacancies requiring only Romanian and 8.4 percent of vacancies requiring only Russian (Annex 20). The only 2-digit occupational group in which the share of vacancies requiring only Romanian is larger than that of requiring both languages is General and keyboard clerks. In 13 out of 34 2-digit occupational

41

groups vacancies requiring knowledge of the Russian language (alone or together with Romanian) are more common than vacancies requiring knowledge of the Romanian language (Annex 20).

Slightly less than one in four vacancies require basic computer skills. As reflected in the analysis of requirements to skills across occupations (Annex 17), the occupations that are the most computer skills-intensive are Handicraft and printing workers (76 percent), General and keyboard clerks (47 percent), and Numerical and material recording clerks (44 percent). This is in line with expectations as many office jobs require at least some level of computer skills such as Microsoft Office, Windows, Internet, e-mail, etc. Beblavý et al. (2016a) argue that due to further digitalization some of basic computer skills may become implicit in vacancy announcements as employers could expect all job applicants to possess these qualifications. ICT-related occupations – ICT professionals and ICT technicians – do demand computer skills, but these skills are advanced and are classified as job-specific technical skills (see Annex 19). The occupations in which the smallest percentages of vacancies require basic computer skills are Assemblers, Laborers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transport, Cleaners and helpers (less than 5 percent in all), i.e. manual jobs in which tasks do not entail any operations with computer.

Communication skills are also called in roughly one in five vacancies overall, varying from 0 percent for Food preparation assistants to 40 percent for Business and administration associate professionals. Communication is particularly valued among Sales workers (second most demanded skill within occupation) and Health associate professionals (third most demanded skill within occupation). Good communications skills are useful for these positions in sales and health care where daily interaction with people is among the highest. Communication with clients and partners is also essential for managers and professionals, especially for Administrative and commercial managers and for Business and administration professionals as documented by a high share of vacancies in these occupations that require good communication skills (Annex 17).

42

Table 4: Ranking of skills requested by employers in vacancies posted to private job portals by a 2-digit occupational group

Occupational group (2-digit ISCO-2008)

Job-

spec

ific

tech

nica

l

Wor

k et

hic

Lite

racy

(Rom

ania

n)

Russ

ian

Com

pute

r

Com

mun

icati

on

Engl

ish

or o

ther

FL

Wor

king

in

depe

nden

tlyIn

tera

ction

with

ot

hers

Moti

vatio

n

Team

wor

k

Lear

ning

Lead

ersh

ip

Prob

lem

solv

ing

Adap

tabi

lity

% o

f vac

anci

es w

ith

at le

ast o

ne

requ

irem

ent t

o sk

ills

Overall 1 2 3 4 4 6 7 8 8 10 11 12 13 14 15 66.8Administrative and commercial managers 3 8 1 1 5 4 6 7 13 10 10 13 9 10 90.1Production and specialized services managers 1 6 4 2 3 5 8 7 11 10 11 14 9 13 78.8Hospitality, retail and other services managers 4 5 2 1 3 6 7 8 9 11 12 13 10 14 15 78.9Science and engineering professionals 1 2 3 5 4 7 6 8 14 10 9 11 12 13 15 86.6Health professionals 7 3 1 2 5 4 6 10 8 13 9 10 10 50.0Teaching professionals 6 4 2 3 7 5 1 11 8 9 10 12 13 74.7Business and administration professionals 1 5 2 3 4 6 7 8 11 9 12 14 10 13 15 88.9Information and communications technology professionals 1 4 6 7 2 5 3 8 14 10 9 11 13 12 15 93.0Legal, social and cultural professionals 2 4 1 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 12 13 14 11 15 86.3Science and engineering associate professionals 1 2 5 3 4 6 7 8 10 11 9 13 12 14 14 79.0Health associate professionals 2 1 4 4 10 3 8 7 6 10 9 12 50.7Business and administration associate professionals 3 6 2 1 5 4 7 8 10 9 11 12 13 14 15 87.5Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals 1 4 3 2 5 6 8 7 10 13 9 11 12 14 15 78.1Information and communications technicians 1 5 2 3 9 4 9 8 6 11 7 11 91.1General and keyboard clerks 6 4 2 3 1 5 7 10 8 9 12 12 11 14 15 75.1Customer services clerks 7 3 1 2 4 5 6 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 82.2Numerical and material recording clerks 4 1 5 3 2 6 8 7 12 9 10 10 13 81.1Personal service workers 6 1 2 3 8 4 5 9 7 11 10 13 12 14 45.5Sales workers 6 4 1 3 5 2 7 8 9 10 12 11 13 13 72.6Personal care workers 2 1 3 4 5 7 8 6 8 32.0Protective services workers 4 1 2 3 5 7 9 5 8 13 10 14 11 12 61.7Building and related trades workers, excluding electricians 1 2 3 3 6 5 6 9 9 8 9 29.6Metal, machinery and related trades workers 2 1 6 7 4 5 9 3 9 11 7 39.4Handicraft and printing workers 3 2 5 6 1 7 4 8 11 12 10 9 13 13 91.9Electrical and electronic trades workers 1 2 7 4 3 4 8 6 9 9 9 46.7

43

Food processing, wood working, garment and other craft and related trades workers 2 1 4 6 9 5 10 3 12 11 8 7 13 13 39.0

Stationary plant and machine operators 1 2 4 5 3 7 8 6 10 8 42.4Assemblers 1 2 5 4 12 6 8 3 10 11 7 8 49.0Drivers and mobile plant operators 3 1 2 4 6 5 8 6 9 13 10 12 14 11 46.9Cleaners and helpers 3 1 4 5 10 6 7 2 7 10 9 12 12 31.0Agricultural, forestry and fishery laborers 2 1 3 5 4 7 9 8 6 10 10 61.7Laborers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transport 2 1 4 7 12 5 9 3 7 10 6 10 44.7

Food preparation assistants 5 1 5 7 7 2 3 7 3 17.1Refuse workers and other elementary workers 5 1 2 3 11 4 12 7 6 9 8 9 55.5

Notes: The sample includes 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018. Ranking is based on the skill’s request frequencies presented in Annex 17. Cells are empty if no vacancy within an occupation required a given skill. Numeracy is not shown in this Table because of a very low frequency. Other clerical support workers (code 44), Market-oriented skilled agricultural workers (code 61), and Market-oriented skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers (code 62) are removed from the table because of a small sample size but they are counted in “Overall”. “Overall” also includes vacancies with unspecified occupational group.

44

2.3. Comparison of vacancies posted to the ANOFM and private job portalsCedefop (2019 a, b) identifies five groups of factors that might explain preferences of employers for using public or private recruiting channels. These are: (i) legal and regulatory framework obliging employers to post all vacancies to the PES or not and its enforcement; (ii) type of jobs in terms of the skill level required for the position and sectors; (iii) type of job seekers (registered unemployed vs. ‘career movers’; young vs. old); (iv) type of employer in terms of the size, geographic location, ownership, recruiting budgets and HR staff; (iv) level of labor shortages. The latter factor is very important in the Moldovan context: observed labor shortages cause employers to advertise broadly positions that are increasingly difficult to fill using ANOFM, private job portals and other recruitment channels. Other positions are more likely to be advertised either on private job portals or via ANOFM depending on occupation, sector, location and employer preferences. Companies may also prefer private job portals for posting irregular vacancies in order to avoid oversight from the government agency which is obliged to ensure compliance of vacant jobs with national standards and regulations, including social security contributions and payment at least the minimum wage, before their registration.

Vacancies posted to private job portals have a substantially larger share of high-skilled occupations than vacancies reported to the ANOFM (Figure 20). This is in line with findings for Ukraine (Muller and Safir, 2019) and for many European countries (Cedefop, 2019b). Besides, vacancies posted to private job portals are distributed relatively evenly across broad occupational groups compared to the ANOFM vacancies which are skewed to craft and related trades workers and elementary occupations.

Figure 20: Vacancies by 1-digit occupational group and skill level: private job portals vs. ANOFM (%)

Senior officials and managers

Professionals

Technicians and associate professionals

Clerks

Service workers and shop and market sales workers

Skilled agricultural and fishery workers

Craft and related trades workers

Plant and machine operators and assemblers

Elementary occupations

Unspecified

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Private job portals ANOFM, only jobs in Moldova

Percentage of vacancies

45

Source: Author’s estimations based on 9,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, excluding vacancies for the work abroad, and the sample of 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018.

Notes: Occupational groups are based on ISCO-2008 1-digit categories. Skill levels are defined in accordance with the ILO mapping of skill levels to occupations (Annex 2).

Although the most popular occupational group in the ANOFM dataset – Food processing, wood working, garment and other craft and related trades workers – is also among the top 20 occupations in the sample of vacancies from private job portals, it ranks the 13th and contains almost 5 times less vacancies than in the ANOFM dataset (538 vs. 2,607 vacancies, see Annex 15 and Annex 3). A shortage of qualified sewers, confectioners and other workers in growing industries encourage Moldovan employers to use different recruitment channels such as employment services provided by ANOFM and online job portals.

Vacancies advertised on private job portals are disproportionately concentrated in modern activities in the services sectors whereas vacancies reported to the ANOFM represent predominantly traditional sectors such as industry, construction, agriculture and public services (Figure 21). However, as has been mentioned before, the share of Professional, technical, administrative and support service activities in vacancies advertised on private job portals is likely to be overestimated due to the classification error. Other sectors which are much more likely to post vacancies online than report to the ANOFM include Transportation and storage, Accommodation and food service activities, Information and communication, Financial and insurance activities, Real estate activities, and Arts, entertainment and recreation (comparing the shares from Figure 21).

Figure 21: Vacancies by sector: private job portals vs. ANOFM (%)

Agriculture

Construction

Transportation and storage

Information and communication

Real estate activities

Public administration

Health care

Other service activities

Work from home

Top management

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

Private job portals ANOFM, only jobs in Moldova

Percentage of vacancies

Source: Author’s estimations based on 9,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, excluding vacancies for the work abroad, and the sample of 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018.

Notes: Industry includes Mining and quarrying, Manufacturing, Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply and Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities. Mapping between Moldovan classification of economic activities (sectors) and categories used in private job portals is provided in Annex 13.

46

Vacancies in the two samples are also very different in terms of the incidence of requirements to education and skills. While a certain level of education is required in all job vacancies in the ANOFM dataset, only 60 percent of vacancies in the sample from private job portals vacancies specify some level of education, either in the categorical variable or in a free-text job description ( Figure 22). The main explanation for this discrepancy is that the standard vacancy registration form used by the ANOFM includes a mandatory field about the minimum level of education. The forms provided on private job portals seem to leave employers with a voluntary choice whether to report required education or not. Besides, employers looking for highly qualified workers via online private job portals may prefer to specify the requested skills in great detail rather than requesting formal education that often fails to act as a proper signal of individual’s abilities and productivity. A huge difference in the incidence of requirements to all broad types of skills between vacancies advertised on private job portals as opposed to the ANOFM seems to support this hypothesis (Figure 22).

Figure 22: Requirements to education and skills in vacancies: private job portals vs. ANOFM (%)

Education

Experience

Basic cognitive skills

Higher-order cognitive skills

Technical skills

Socio-emotional skills

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

100

24.3

2.3

4.9

8.1

3.9

60.3

55

28.76

44.2

43.9

41.9

Private job portals ANOFM, only jobs in Moldova

Percentage of vacancies

Source: Author’s estimations based on 9,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018 (excluding vacancies for the work abroad) and the sample of 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018.

Notes: Shares of vacancies with requirements to education and experience are based on respective categorical filter variables in the datasets, excluding entries with “No/Any/Unspecified” education or experience if there is no some information on required education or experience in a free-text job description. Shares of vacancies with requirements to skills are based on information extracted from a free-text job description. Examples of skills belonging to respective broad skill groups is provided in Annex 7.

Overall, employers using online job portals to find qualified job candidates are much more demanding compared to employers who report their vacancies to the ANOFM. This can be seen from the comparison of the mean number of requirements to skills per vacancy across 2-digit occupational groups (Figure 23) and other indicators provided in Annex 17 and Annex 8 (see the definition of skills and used indicators in Box 3 and Annex 7). The reason for this discrepancy is not only because online job postings are disproportionately concentrated in high-skilled occupations that require more skills. As Figure 23 shows, the intensity of requirements in the sample of vacancies from private job portals is substantially larger compared to the sample of ANOFM vacancies in all 2-digit occupational groups, including low-skilled occupations such as cleaners or laborers in agriculture, manufacturing or construction. As employers need to pay a fee for advanced services of job portals (see Box 4), posting vacancies online encourages employers to devote more time and space in their job postings to spell out all important skills in order to increase the probability of good

47

match and decrease recruitment costs. On the other hand, employers using ANOFM services free-of-charge might fully rely on ANOFM as a job broker, at least at the initial stage of recruitment, and do not consider it necessary to articulate all requirements in the standard vacancy registration form.

In both samples, more complex jobs tend to have a higher intensity of requirements to skills (Figure 23). This refers not only to managerial or professional jobs, but also to blue-collar jobs. The most demanding occupations in the sample of vacancies from private job portals are Administrative and commercial managers (code 12), Business and administration professionals (code 24), Business and administration associate professionals (code 33), Handicraft and printing workers (code 73) and Legal, social and cultural professionals (code 26).

Figure 23: Intensity of requirements to skills in vacancies by 2-digit occupational group: private job portals vs. ANOFM

Administrative and commercial managersHospitality, retail and other services managers

Health professionalsBusiness and administration professionals

Legal, social and cultural professionalsHealth associate professionals

Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionalsGeneral and keyboard clerks

Numerical and material recording clerksSales workers

Protective services workersMetal, machinery and related trades workers

Electrical and electronic trades workersStationary plant and machine operators

Drivers and mobile plant operatorsAgricultural, forestry and fishery laborers

Food preparation assistants

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4

Private job portals ANOFM, only jobs in Moldova

Source: Author’s estimations based on 9,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, excluding vacancies for the work abroad, and the sample of 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018.

Notes: The Figure shows the mean number of requirements to skills per vacancy within a 2-digit occupational group provided in Annex 8 and Annex 17. Occupations are ordered from high- to lower-skilled in accordance with the ISCO.

48

3. ConclusionsThis report analyzes the skills demand in Moldova by studying the content of vacancies from two sources – about 10,000 vacancies reported by employers to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018 and over 20,000 vacancies posted to two online private job portals over the same period. In addition to answering an important question on what specific skills and qualifications Moldovan employers look for when hiring, the report also sheds light on the differences between vacancies reported to the ANOFM as opposed to those advertised on popular private job portals.

Limitations: The findings presented in this report apply to the sample of job vacancies in a particular season (winter 2017-2018), which do not reflect current demand and represent only a segment of available vacancies in Moldova. Despite enormous efforts of the team to make the unstructured and non-standardized data scraped from online portals suitable for the statistical analysis, the dataset is still imperfect and may contain classification and measurement errors, especially with regard to occupational groups and skills. For these reasons, quantitative results on the frequency of skill requirements across occupational groups must be treated with appropriate caution.

Main findings:

Consistent with existing studies in the EU and Ukraine, vacancies advertised on private job portals have a substantially larger share of high-skilled occupations, belonging to modern fast-growing sectors and firms located in the capital city compared to vacancies reported to the ANOFM. The ANOFM vacancies are more evenly spread across regions but they are biased to inadequately paid jobs for blue-collar workers in the manufacturing sector and elementary occupations.

Many vacancies advertised on private job portals, especially at joblist.md, offer alternative patterns of work such as flexible working hours, shift work, part-time employment, and remote or freelance work. Although such alternative patterns of work are attractive employment opportunities for those wishing to reconcile paid employment with studies, main job, family obligations or other activities, they entail high risks of employment and income insecurity, inadequate social security coverage and violations of fundamental rights at work;

Actual expectations of Moldovan employers about the level of education (at least for the segment of jobs advertised via ANOFM) somewhat differ from the conventional mapping between ISCO occupational groups and education suggested by the ILO. For example, tertiary education is required for Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals (code 34), upper secondary education is predominantly required for Business and administration associate professionals (code 33) and Information and communications technicians (code 35), whereas vocational education is enough to work as Science and engineering associate professionals (code 31);

On the other hand, employers advertising jobs on private job portals seem to be less concerned about the level of formal education than employers using services of ANOFM, probably because formal education is not seen as a proper signal of individual’s abilities and productivity;

Employers using online job portals tend to be more demanding compared to employers who report their vacancies to the ANOFM: 67 percent of vacancies from private job portals have at least one skill requirement compared to less than 10 percent of ANOFM vacancies, and there is huge difference in the intensity of skill requirements between two channels of vacancies in all 2-digit occupational groups. The most demanding occupational group among vacancies from private job portals is administrative and commercial managers, but it is far behind handicraft and printing workers, ICT technicians and professionals, and stationary plant and machine operators in the ANOFM dataset.

49

The top skills in both channels (private and ANOFM) include language requirements (Romanian, Russian, foreign), computer skills, and job-specific technical skills. Work ethic and communication skills are also highly valued skills in vacancies posted on private job portals, but not in the ANOFM dataset. Other socio-emotional skills such as working independently, interaction with others, motivation, teamwork, learning, leadership, problem solving, and adaptability are requested much less frequently, and there are several occupations in which some of these skills are not requested at all.

When various skills are grouped into broad categories, socio-emotional skills appear to be as important as higher-order cognitive or technical skills in the dataset of vacancies scraped from private job portals (the incidence of requirements is over 40 percent in all three categories of skills). But much fewer references to socio-emotional skills can be found in vacancies reported to the ANOFM, in absolute terms (in less than 4 percent of all surveyed vacancies) and compared to the incidence of requirements to technical skills (8 percent) and higher-order cognitive skills (about 5 percent).

Overall, employers using online job portals are much more demanding compared to employers who report their vacancies to the ANOFM. This can be explained by the acute difference in the occupational and regional composition of vacancies, with overrepresentation of high-skilled occupations from the Chisinau municipality among vacancies advertised on private job portals. An alternative explanation is that the need to pay fee for the services of private job portals seem to encourage employers to devote more time and space in their job postings to spell out all important skills in order to obtain best value for money. At the same time, many employers using free services of the ANOFM do not consider it necessary to articulate all requirements in the standard vacancy registration form.

Policy implications:

Understanding skills and other job requirements is crucial for job seekers, employers, education and training providers, career guidance practitioners and policy-makers in order to make more informed decisions, success on the labour market and improve the targeting of employment and training services.

Practical implications from the study of vacancies in Moldova are grouped by major users:

1) ANOFM (National Employment agency)

It is crucial to expand the reach of ANOFM to employers which represent different forms of ownership, location, size, economic activity and type of jobs in terms of the skill content. In order to create effective and lasting cooperation of ANOFM with employers it is important to improve the core services of job mediation and offer more specialized support to employers. According to the study in European countries (European Commission, 2012) supported by the studies in Moldova (ILO, 2017; Ferré and Tzimas, 2019), effective services for employers include:

the use of various traditional (face-to-face) and innovative (web-based) tools to communicate with employers, advertise ANOFM activities, register vacancies and help employers find the right candidates;

supply of up-to-date information about the labor market, including important information about current and future skills needs and anticipated shortages;

consultancy services like advice on human resources management, workforce skills development, occupational health issues, anti-discrimination practices and legal matters;

job meditation and other services tailored to needs of SMEs, lower-capacity firms and firms facing recruitment problems.

50

But in order to make these services and initiatives more effective and widespread, regular trainings and seminars for frontline staff should be conducted and other resource constraints should be removed (ILO, 2017; Ferré and Tzimas, 2019).

It would be also good to change the vacancy registration form used by the ANOFM to make it easier for employers to provide information about requirements to skills and work experience and to make it possible to fill it online (ILO, 2017).25 Our study shows that the mandatory field about experience does not work as only 21 percent of vacancies contained requirement about non-zero experience. Given this, we would recommend ANOFM to check information about required experience reported by employers in the mandatory field and a free-text vacancy description and correct mistakes in order to avoid any inconsistencies in vacancy description and ensure a better match in the future. Besides, it would be better to provide an opportunity to report about the necessary experience in months if it is enough to have some experience below 1 year. Taking into account that education often fails to signal about the necessary hard and soft skills, it is important to improve the form by introducing the menu of skills which tend to be highly valued by Moldovan employers: job-specific technical, knowledge of Romanian/ Russian/ English or other foreign language, basic computer skills, communication, work ethic, motivation, teamwork, driving skills, etc. By ticking boxes with required skills and therefore placing additional emphasis on the skills that are highly valued and potentially undersupplied, employers can help ANOFM and themselves to find job candidates easier and faster.

Another potential area of intervention that comes from our study is to improve employers’ job posting behavior by providing support in constructing better job ads, for example posting (more) socio-emotional skills and eliminating discriminatory language.

ANOFM could increase the reach and improve the services via effective public-private partnership by signing agreements with private employment agencies and companies managing job portals (ILO, 2017). Cooperative partnership through information exchange seems to be not effective in Moldova, whereas other forms of public-private partnership in employment services suggested in the literature (Barbier et al., 2003)26 are difficult to apply in a low-income transition country. We suggest a cooperative public-private partnership in training of local employers to follow certain open data standards in online job postings, making job descriptions more consistent and detailed about employers’ needs. The broad adoption by employers of these standards will ensure wider dissemination of job postings and will improve job searchers’ ability to find the information they want.27 ANOFM is well suited to bring together private employment agencies and other stakeholders and to facilitate open data standards for online job vacancies, to be followed by the measures to encourage application developers and employers to adopt these data standards.

2) Private job portals

It is important that private job portals improve their reach outside Chisinau. Important direct factors driving the use of online job portals for recruitment and job search is the increasing digitalization of the economy, the availability of digital and internet skills in the population, and the spreading of alternative forms of work such as freelance, remote work or part-time employment (Cedefop, 2019b). Having mobile-friendly applications and advertising them via

25 According to the ILO (2017), the online vacancy notification system is possible but not very popular among employers because it requires the filling of a form with extensive information such as occupational code and details about activity of the firm.26 These are complementary partnership (when the government funds private partners to complement public employment services) and competitive partnership (when the government places public and private employment agencies in direct competition for public resources).27 See https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2017/08/15/437303/modernizing-americas-workforce-data-architecture/.

51

social networks can enhance presence amongst employers and job seekers who do not have regular access to desktops.

Like in the case of ANOFM, it would be good to improve the vacancy registration form including mandatory fields for education and experience and multiple-choice options for required skills. Such structured data would save job search costs and improve job matching. Besides, these data would enable job portals to provide a regular monitoring of their vacancies useful for their current and potential clients (employers and job seekers).

3) Education and training providers and public employment service (ANOFM)

Using information about the level and field of education, work experience, job-specific, cognitive and socio-emotional skills required by employers at 2-digit occupations, ANOFM together with education and training providers can redesign training programmes and curricula to make them more aligned to the needs of local employers. For example, our vacancy-based analysis shows that proficiency in “1-C” Accounting and vector image editors (Photoshop, CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator), knowledge of tax, labor, occupational safety and other legislation, being bilingual (Romanian and Russian) and good communication skills are required in many occupations. Hence, formal educational institutions, private training providers and ANOFM should aim at equipping their students and trainees with these important skills to improve their employability and increase employers’ trust in ANOFM and the national education system.

Socio-emotional skills are also highly valued by Moldovan employers (especially by employers advertising jobs via private job portals), but they seem to fall outside of school curriculum. Rutkowski et al. (2017) provide useful guidelines on how to reform the education and training system in Moldova and offer examples of school-based programs to develop socio-emotional skills. Cunningham and Villasenor (2016) argue that certain skills are better taught by parents, mentors, or colleagues in the work place, and therefore these actors should play a more structured role in the skills development process that begins at birth and continues throughout the life cycle.

Education and training providers and public employment service should also consider developing digital skills of population, especially among low-skilled workers, older generations and other disadvantaged groups. Basic digital skills, namely searching information in the Internet, registering profiles and sending emails/messages, are essential for the use of modern job search channels including online job portals, online newspapers, employers’ websites, social networks, etc. Some more advanced digital skills can help adults to stand out from the crowd and find a higher-paid job.

4) Job seekers

Information about the skills required by employers for certain occupations is crucial for making informed career choices and having better employment prospects. However, it may be difficult for many job seekers to interpret the data from the vacancy analysis without assistance from a qualified intermediary, e.g. career advisor or job counselor (Cedefop, 2019b). Hence, the information on highly valued skills which is targeted directly at students and job seekers needs to be presented in a simple user-friendly way, for example as a leaflet containing infographic accompanied by short simple messages, as it has been done in Georgia (Rutkowski et al., 2017).

Vacancies advertised on private job portals are a rich source of real-time information about skills and other job requirements. However, given complexity of collection and processing of the unstructured and non-standardized data, ANOFM does not have capacity and means to use this data source for regular monitoring of labor market trends in Moldova. The analysis presented in this report could be revisited in the future when technology with artificial intelligence and machine learning advances further to reduce the time and human resources needed for a regular analysis of job openings advertised via various channels.

52

REFERENCES

Barbier, Jean-Paul, Ellen Hansen, and Alexander Samorodov. 2003. Public-private partnerships in employment services. EMP/SKILLS Working Paper No. 17, Geneva: ILO.

Beblavý, Miroslav, Brian Fabo, and Karolien Lenaerts. 2016a. Skills requirements for the 30 most-frequently advertised occupations in the United States: An analysis based on online vacancy data. CEPS Special Report No. 132, Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies.

Beblavý, Miroslav, Brian Fabo, and Karolien Lenaerts. 2016b. Demand for digital skills in the US labour market: The IT skills pyramid. CEPS Special Report No. 154, Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies.

Beblavý, Miroslav, Lucia Mýtna Kureková, and Corina Haita. 2016c. The surprisingly exclusive nature of medium- and low-skilled jobs: Evidence from a Slovak job portal. Personnel Review, Vol. 45 (2), pp. 255 – 273.

Beblavý, Miroslav, Brian Fabo, and Karolien Lenaerts. 2017. The importance of foreign language skills in the labour markets of Central and Eastern Europe: an assessment based on data from online job portals. Empirica, DOI: 10.1007/s10663-017-9374-6.

Burning Glass Technologies (BGT). 2015. The Human Factor: The Hard Time Employers Have Finding Soft Skills. Available at: https://www.burning-glass.com/research-project/baseline-skills/.

Carnevale, Anthony P., Tamara Jayasundera, and Dmitri Repnikov. 2014. Understanding online job ads data: a technical report. Technical Report, Georgetown University, McCourt School on Public Policy, Center on Education and the Workforce, April.

Cedefop (2019a). Online Job Vacancies and Skills Analysis: A Cedefop Pan-European Approach. Luxembourg: Publications Office. Available at: http://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2801/097022.

Cedefop (2019b). The Online Job Vacancy Market in the EU: Driving Forces and Emerging Trends . Luxembourg: Publications Office. Cedefop research paper; No 72. Available at: http://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2801/16675

Cunningham, Wendy, and Paula Villasenor. 2016. Employer voices, employer demands, and implications for public skills development policy connecting the labor and education sectors . Policy Research working paper no. 7582. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

Del Carpio, Ximena, Olga Kupets, Noël Muller, and Anna Olefir. 2017. Skills for a Modern Ukraine. Directions in Development. Washington D.C.: World Bank.

Deming, David, and Lisa B. Kahn. 2018. Skill Requirements across Firms and Labor Markets: Evidence from Job Postings for Professionals, Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 36(S1), pp. S337-S369.European Commission. 2012. How to best structure services for employers? (by Jaap de Koning and José Gravesteijn), Brussels: European Commission.

Ferré, Céline, and Giannis Tzimas. 2019. The Future of Labor Market Programs and Services in Moldova. Functional Review of Public Employment Service’s Systems. Draft report prepared for the World Bank.Hershbein, Brad, and Lisa B. Kahn. 2018. Do recessions accelerate routine-biased technological change? Evidence from vacancy postings. American Economic Review, Vol. 108 (7), pp. 1737-1772.

International Labour Office (ILO). 2012. International Standard Classification of Occupations: ISCO-08. Vol.1, Structure, Group Definitions and Correspondence Tables. Geneva: ILO.

53

International Labour Office (ILO). 2016. Non-Standard Employment around the World: Understanding Challenges, Shaping Prospects. Geneva: ILO.

International Labour Office (ILO). 2017. Assessment of the Delivery of Employment Services for Youth by the National Employment Agency of the Republic of Moldova. Geneva: ILO.

Kureková, Lucia Mýtna, Miroslav Beblavý, Corina Haita, and Anna Thum-Thysen. 2015a. Employers’ skill preferences across Europe: Between cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Journal of Education and Work, 03/2015, DOI: 10.1080/13639080.2015.1024641.

Kureková, Lucia Mýtna, Miroslav Beblavý, and Anna Thum-Thysen. 2015b. Using online vacancies and web surveys to analyse the labour market: A methodological inquiry. IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 4(1), pp. 1–20.

Merotto, Dino Leonardo, Michael Weber, Reyes Aterido; Adrian Scutaru, et al. 2016. Moldova Poverty Assessment 2016: A Jobs Diagnostic for Moldova – 10 Key Facts. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

Muller, Noël, and Abla Safir. 2019. What Employers Actually Want? Skills in demand in online job vacancies in Ukraine. Discussion paper No. 1932, Social Protection and Jobs, Washington D.C.: World Bank.

Popa, Ana, Rodion Kolyshko, Natalia Popova and Francesco Panzica. 2013. Research and Analysis of Vacancies and Skills Needs in the European Union, in the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine . International Labour Organization, Decent Work Technical Support Team and Country Office for Central and Eastern Europe, Budapest: ILO.

Rutkowski, Jan, Victoria Levin, and Ali Bargu. 2017. Missing Skills: Results of the Skills Module of the Moldovan Labor Market Forecast Survey. Washington D.C. : World Bank.

World Bank. 2016a. Moldova – Paths to Sustained Prosperity: A Systematic Country Diagnostic . Washington D.C.: World Bank.

World Bank. 2016b. From Aspirations to Occupations: The Role of Information in Educational and Labor Market Decisions in Moldova. Washington D.C.: World Bank.

World Bank. 2017a. Moldova – Country Partnership Framework for the Period FY18-21. Washington D.C.: World Bank.

World Bank. 2017b. Assessment of the private sector skills demand and the extent of private sector engagement in creating demand-led skills ecosystem in Moldova. Washington D.C.: World Bank.

54

ANNEXES

Annex 1: Descriptive statistics of vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017-February 2018

Job postings VacanciesN Share (%) N Share (%)

Total 3,528 100 10,806 100Month of registration

December 2017 949 26.9 2,646 24.5January 2018 1,249 35.4 4,263 39.5February 2018 1,330 37.7 3,897 36.1

Type of vacancyNewly created vacancy 272 7.7 1,874 17.3Position became vacant due to termination of employment relationship 3,256 92.3 8,932 82.7

Type of employment contractFixed-term 900 25.5 2,302 21.3Permanent (indefinite term) 2,259 64.0 7,614 70.5Secondary job (part-time) 369 10.5 890 8.2

Job is appropriate for vulnerable groupsStudents 64 1.8 325 3.0Pensioners 112 3.2 280 2.6Disabled 39 1.1 293 2.7

OwnershipState 1,223 34.7 2,163 20.0Municipal 119 3.4 187 1.7Private 1,658 47.0 4,877 45.1Collective 224 6.4 641 5.9Collective (agriculture) 3 0.1 19 0.2Property of public organizations and movements 11 0.3 11 0.1Mixed (public and private) without foreign participation 54 1.5 348 3.2Property of Moldova in joint ownership with foreign participation 1 0.0 5 0.1Property of foreign countries 14 0.4 81 0.8Property of foreign citizens, legal entities and stateless persons 46 1.3 439 4.1Mixed foreign 23 0.7 1,434 13.3Foreign property in joint ownership with participation of Moldova 23 0.7 137 1.3Property of joint ventures 56 1.6 359 3.3Other 73 2.1 105 1.0

Macroregion*Municipality Chisinau 1,003 28.4 2,883 26.7North 661 18.7 2,364 21.9Center 953 27.0 1,980 18.3South 704 20.0 2,156 20.0T.A.U. Gagauzia 203 5.8 423 3.9Abroad 4 0.1 1,000 9.3

SectorAgriculture, forestry and fishing 199 5.6 849 7.9Mining and quarrying 12 0.3 219 2.0Manufacturing 617 17.5 3,923 36.3Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply 48 1.4 84 0.8Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities 42 1.2 76 0.7Construction 163 4.6 1,347 12.5Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles 630 17.9 1,136 10.5Transportation and storage 171 4.9 393 3.6

55

Accommodation and food service activities 57 1.6 80 0.7Information and communication 13 0.4 22 0.2Financial and insurance activities 40 1.1 85 0.8Real estate activities 1 0.0 1 0.0Administrative and support service activities 1 0.0 1 0.0Public administration and defense; compulsory social security 361 10.2 530 4.9Education 394 11.2 511 4.7Human health and social work activities 248 7.0 396 3.7Arts, entertainment and recreation 7 0.2 8 0.1Other service activities 523 14.8 1,144 10.6Activities of households as employers 1 0.0 1 0.0

Occupation (1-digit ISCO)Senior officials and managers 196 5.6 226 2.1Professionals 624 17.7 912 8.4Technicians and associate professionals 301 8.5 582 5.4Clerks 198 5.6 358 3.3Service workers and shop and market sales workers 625 17.7 1,120 10.4Skilled agricultural workers 29 0.8 159 1.5Craft and related trades workers 502 14.2 4,078 37.7Plant and machine operators, and assemblers 262 7.4 1,418 13.1Elementary occupations 791 22.4 1,953 18.1

Required education**Primary 55 1.6 216 2.0Lower secondary 888 25.2 3,077 28.5Upper secondary 642 18.2 3,154 29.2Vocational 837 23.7 2,726 25.2Post-secondary, non-tertiary 332 9.4 504 4.7Tertiary 774 21.9 1,129 10.5

Required experienceNo experience (0 year) 2,541 72.0 7,746 71.71 year 596 16.9 2,341 21.72-4 years 295 8.4 552 5.15+ years 96 2.7 167 1.6

Notes: *The macroregions are defined in accordance with the Law no. 438-XVI from 28.12.2006 On regional development in Moldova. Composition of the regions: 1. Municipality Chisinau; 2. North (mun. Balti, Briceni, Donduseni, Drochia, Edinet, Falesti, Floresti, Glodeni, Ocnita, Riscani, Singerei, Soroca); 3. Center (Anenii Noi, Calarasi, Criuleni, Dubasari, Hancesti, Ialoveni, Nisporeni, Orhei, Rezina, Straseni, Soldanesti, Telenesti, Ungheni); 4. South (Basarabeasca, Cahul, Cantemir, Causeni, Cimislia, Leova, Stefan Voda, Taraclia); 5. T.A.U Gagauzia.** Primary = Primar sau fara scoala; Lower secondary = Secundar general (gimnaziu); Upper secondary = Secundar general (liceu,scoala medie generala); Vocational = Secundar profesionale (scoala profesionala, liceul profesional); Post-secondary, non-tertiary = Postsecundar profesional (colegiu); Tertiary = Superior de licenta and Superior de master sau superior de doctorat.

56

Annex 2: ILO mapping of skill levels to occupations and education levels

Skill level ISCO-2008 major group ISCED-1997 education groupSkill level 4 1. Senior officials and managers

2. Professionals6 Second stage of tertiary education (leading to an advanced research qualification)5A First stage of tertiary education, 1st degree (medium duration)

Skill level 3 3. Technicians and associate professionals 5B First stage of tertiary education (short or medium duration)

Skill level 2 4. Clerks5. Service workers and shop and market sales workers6. Skilled agricultural and fishery workers7. Craft and related trade workers8. Plant and machine operators and assemblers

4 Post-secondary, non-tertiary education3 Upper secondary level of education2 Lower secondary level of education

Skill level 1 9. Elementary occupations 1 Primary level of education

Source: ILO (2012), Tables 1 and 2

57

Annex 3: ANOFM vacancies by 2-digit occupational group

Occupational group (2-digit ISCO) ISCO code

ANOFM vacancies Share of occupation in

wage employment in 2016 (%)

N total/ N jobs abroad

Share, all jobs

Share, only jobs

in Moldova

Food processing, wood working, garment and other craft and related trades workers

75 2,607 24.1 26.6 5.0

Refuse workers and other elementary workers 96 890 8.2 9.1 4.9Stationary plant and machine operators 81 899/250 8.3 6.6 1.3Personal service workers 51 403 3.7 4.1 4.1Agricultural, forestry and fishery laborers 92 362 3.4 3.7 2.6Sales workers 52 358 3.3 3.7 8.2Metal, machinery and related trades workers 72 322 3.0 3.3 2.5Business and administration professionals 24 316 2.9 3.2 5.0Drivers and mobile plant operators 83 313 2.9 3.2 7.4Laborers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transport

93 309 2.9 3.2 2.9

Cleaners and helpers 91 277 2.6 2.8 3.7Building and related trades workers, excluding electricians

71 974/750 9.0 2.3 2.7

Assemblers 82 206 1.9 2.1 0.2Business and administration associate professionals 33 204 1.9 2.1 3.8Customer services clerks 42 186 1.7 1.9 1.2Legal, social and cultural professionals 26 183 1.7 1.9 3.0Protective services workers 54 181 1.7 1.9 1.5Personal care workers 53 178 1.7 1.8 3.1Science and engineering associate professionals 31 169 1.6 1.7 1.4Science and engineering professionals 21 152 1.4 1.6 2.9Teaching professionals 23 124 1.2 1.3 7.2Food preparation assistants 94 114 1.1 1.2 0.4Electrical and electronic trades workers 74 110 1.0 1.1 2.3Market-oriented skilled agricultural workers 61 108 1.0 1.1 1.3Health professionals 22 107 1.0 1.1 2.2Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals

34 80 0.7 0.8 0.9

General and keyboard clerks 41 80 0.7 0.8 0.7Health associate professionals 32 71 0.7 0.7 3.4Administrative and commercial managers 12 67 0.6 0.7 2.0Handicraft and printing workers 73 65 0.6 0.7 0.3Hospitality, retail and other services managers 14 60 0.6 0.6 3.6Information and communications technicians 35 58 0.5 0.6 0.3Production and specialized services managers 13 55 0.5 0.6 3.5Market-oriented skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers

62 51 0.5 0.5 0.1

Numerical and material recording clerks 43 48 0.4 0.5 1.2Chief executives, senior officials and legislators 11 44 0.4 0.5 1.2Other clerical support workers 44 44 0.4 0.5 0.7Information and communications technology professionals

25 30 0.3 0.3 0.9

Total 10,806/ 1000

100 100 100

Source: Share of occupation in wage employment in 2016 – Author’s estimations for employees aged 15 years and above using LFS-2016 data.

58

Notes: The sample includes 10,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, of them 1000 vacancies are for the work abroad (they are excluded from the analysis of requirements). Occupations are sorted by the frequency among jobs in Moldova.

59

Annex 4: Top ten 4-digit occupations, total and by region (ANOFM vacancies, December 2017-February 2018)

Occupation ISCO code

N Occupation ISCO code

N

Total (N=9,806) Chisinau municipality (N=2,883)Garment and related pattern-makers and cutters

7532 1,975 Garment and related pattern-makers and cutters

7532 525

Odd job persons 9622 651 Security guards 5414 110Tailors, dressmakers, furriers and hatters

7531 354 Cooks 5120 99

Food and related products machine operators

8160 305 Shop sales assistants 5223 97

Cleaners and helpers in offices, hotels and other establishments

9112 239 Telephone switchboard operators 4223 80

Cooks 5120 212 Manufacturing laborers not elsewhere classified

9329 69

Mixed crop and livestock farm laborers

9213 206 Cleaners and helpers in offices, hotels and other establishments

9112 64

Shop sales assistants 5223 167 Bank tellers and related clerks 4211 63Elementary workers not elsewhere classified

9629 151 Kitchen helpers 9412 57

Freight handlers 9333 144 Bakers, pastry-cooks and confectionery makers

7512 54

North (N=2,364) Center (N=1,980)Garment and related pattern-makers and cutters

7532 981 Odd job persons 9622 230

Food and related products machine operators

8160 130 Garment and related pattern-makers and cutters

7532 221

Assemblers not elsewhere classified

8219 107 Forestry laborers 9215 92

Odd job persons 9622 107 Shop keepers 5221 75Mechanical machinery assemblers 8211 60 Welders and flame cutters 7212 65Mixed crop and livestock farm laborers

9213 42 Bus and tram drivers 8331 53

Garden and horticultural laborers 9214 39 Cleaners and helpers in offices, hotels and other establishments

9112 53

Cleaners and helpers in offices, hotels and other establishments

9112 38 Bakers, pastry-cooks and confectionery makers

7512 45

Cooks 5120 35 Freight handlers 9333 45Car, taxi and van drivers 8322 33 Car, taxi and van drivers 8322 42

South (N=2,156) TAU Gagauzia (N=423)Tailors, dressmakers, furriers and hatters

7531 335 Shoemaking and related machine operators

8156 80

Odd job persons 9622 261 Garment and related pattern-makers and cutters

7532 53

Garment and related pattern-makers and cutters

7532 195 Odd job persons 9622 22

Food and related products machine operators

8160 137 Wood processing plant operators 8172 20

Mixed crop and livestock farm laborers

9213 136 Cleaners and helpers in offices, hotels and other establishments

9112 20

Weaving and knitting machine operators

8152 110 Bakers, pastry-cooks and confectionery makers

7512 14

Cleaners and helpers in offices, 9112 64 Cooks 5120 13

60

hotels and other establishmentsTree and shrub crop growers 6112 51 Mobile farm and forestry plant

operators8341 11

Policy administration professionals 2422 43 Shop sales assistants 5223 10Shop sales assistants 5223 38 Weaving and knitting machine

operators8152 10

Notes: The sample includes 9,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, excluding vacancies for the work abroad.

61

Annex 5: Mapping of 1- and 2-digit occupational groups to the mode education levels according to requirements of Moldovan employers (ANOFM vacancies)

Occupational group (1-and 2-digit ISCO) ISCO code

Required education

(mode)

Number of vacanciesTotal Requiring

this level of

educationSenior officials and managers 1 Tertiary 226 177Professionals 2 Tertiary 912 721Technicians and associate professionals 3 Upper secondary 582 181Clerks 4 Upper secondary 358 135Service workers and shop and market sales workers 5 Vocational 1,120 412Skilled agricultural and fishery workers 6 Lower secondary 159 101Craft and related trades workers 7 Vocational 3,328 1,755Plant and machine operators and assemblers 8 Upper secondary 1,168 443Elementary occupations 9 Lower secondary 1,953 1,281Chief executives, senior officials and legislators 11 Tertiary 44 42Administrative and commercial managers 12 Tertiary 67 62Production and specialized services managers 13 Tertiary 55 32Hospitality, retail and other services managers 14 Tertiary 60 41Science and engineering professionals 21 Tertiary 152 122Health professionals 22 Tertiary 107 94Teaching professionals 23 Tertiary 124 86Business and administration professionals 24 Tertiary 316 254Information and communications technology professionals 25 Tertiary 30 29Legal, social and cultural professionals 26 Tertiary 183 133Science and engineering associate professionals 31 Vocational 169 92Health associate professionals 32 PSNT (college) 71 59Business and administration associate professionals 33 Upper secondary 204 104Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals 34 Tertiary 80 23Information and communications technicians 35 Upper secondary 58 43General and keyboard clerks 41 PSNT (college) 80 24Customer services clerks 42 Upper secondary 186 92Numerical and material recording clerks 43 Lower secondary 48 15Other clerical support workers 44 Lower secondary 44 22Personal service workers 51 Vocational 403 258Sales workers 52 Upper secondary 358 146Personal care workers 53 Lower secondary 178 111Protective services workers 54 Upper secondary 181 139Market-oriented skilled agricultural workers 61 Lower secondary 108 51Market-oriented skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers

62 Lower secondary 51 50

Building and related trades workers, excluding electricians 71 Vocational 224 132Metal, machinery and related trades workers 72 Vocational 322 263Handicraft and printing workers 73 Lower secondary 65 38Electrical and electronic trades workers 74 Vocational 110 72Food processing, wood working, garment and other craft and related trades workers

75 Vocational 2,607 1,267

Stationary plant and machine operators 81 Upper secondary 649 295Assemblers 82 Lower secondary 206 112Drivers and mobile plant operators 83 Vocational 313 181Cleaners and helpers 91 Lower secondary 277 196Agricultural, forestry and fishery laborers 92 Lower secondary 362 296Laborers in mining, construction, manufacturing and 93 Lower secondary 309 143

62

transportFood preparation assistants 94 Lower secondary 114 48

Refuse workers and other elementary workers 96 Lower secondary 890 598

Notes: The sample includes 9,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, excluding vacancies for the work abroad. PSNT=post-secondary non-tertiary education. The occupations with mismatch between required education as specified by Moldovan employers and the one according to the ILO mapping (see Annex 2) are shaded grey.

63

Annex 6: Required experience by 2-digit occupational group (ANOFM vacancies)*

Occupational group (2-digit ISCO) ISCO code

Required experience (years)

Share of vacancies with

non-zero experience (%)

Mean Median Max

Chief executives, senior officials and legislators 11 1.9 1 10 54.5Administrative and commercial managers 12 3.5 3 10 65.7Production and specialized services managers 13 3.2 3 10 38.2Hospitality, retail and other services managers 14 3.6 3 10 46.7Science and engineering professionals 21 3.0 2 15 51.3Health professionals 22 1.3 1 10 29.9Teaching professionals 23 2.1 2 20 37.1Business and administration professionals 24 1.8 1 5 35.1Information and communications technology professionals

25 2.9 1 10 50.0

Legal, social and cultural professionals 26 1.6 1 5 40.4Science and engineering associate professionals 31 2.5 1 10 32.5Health associate professionals 32 2.0 1 7 18.3Business and administration associate professionals 33 1.6 1 5 19.6Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals 34 1.7 1 10 41.3Information and communications technicians 35 1.1 1 2 12.1General and keyboard clerks 41 1.4 1 3 32.5Customer services clerks 42 1.2 1 3 10.2Numerical and material recording clerks 43 1.3 1 3 31.3Other clerical support workers 44 1.3 1 3 18.2Personal service workers 51 1.5 1 3 23.6Sales workers 52 1.1 1 3 27.4Personal care workers 53 1.1 1 3 10.1Protective services workers 54 1.3 1 2 9.9Market-oriented skilled agricultural workers 61 1.0 1 1 35.2Market-oriented skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers

62 1.0 1 1 2.0

Building and related trades workers, excluding electricians

71 3.3 5 5 10.9

Metal, machinery and related trades workers 72 2.1 2 7 36.3Handicraft and printing workers 73 2.5 2.5 3 3.1Electrical and electronic trades workers 74 1.9 2 5 65.5Food processing, wood working, garment and other craft and related trades workers

75 1.2 1 3 13.3

Stationary plant and machine operators 81 1.7 1 5 3.9Assemblers 82 1.3 1 5 10.2Drivers and mobile plant operators 83 2.3 3 5 59.7Cleaners and helpers 91 1.3 1 3 11.9Agricultural, forestry and fishery laborers 92 1.0 1 1 10.8Laborers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transport

93 1.1 1 2 7.8

Food preparation assistants 94 1.0 1 1 11.4Refuse workers and other elementary workers 96 1.1 1 3 12.1Total 1.8 1 20 19.1

Notes: The sample includes 9,806 vacancies reported to ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, excluding vacancies for the work abroad. Required experience is defined here according to the mandatory field filled out by employers in a job posting form. *Vacancies with zero experience are excluded, and therefore the minimum required experience is 1 year in most occupations.

64

Annex 7: Classification of skills and other requirements used in the analysis

Skill sets Examples of skills included in the group Broad skill group ANOFM vacancies Vacancies from private job portals

1. Literacy (Romanian)

knowledge of the Romanian language knowledge of the Romanian language, grammatically correct speech and/or writing

Basic cognitive

2. Numeracy n.a. numeracy, computation skills Basic cognitive3. Problem solving Problem-solving, planning skills analytical skills, problem-solving, ability to work with large volume of

data, ability to deliver detailed reporting, quantitative skills, presentation skills

Higher-order cognitive

4. Work ethic willingness to work, hardworking, responsibility, orderliness, positive attitude, promptness, thrift

responsibility, diligence, discipline, punctuality, tactfulness, professionalism, commitment, perseverance, hardworking, honesty, accountability, orderliness, positive attitude

Socio-emotional

5. Working independently

creativity, multi-tasking, stress-management

organizational skills, attentiveness, self-management, accuracy, ability to work independently, efficiency, creativity, productivity, stress-management

Socio-emotional

6.Learning n.a. willingness to grow and develop, willingness to learn, ability to learn quickly, readiness to learn, professional development, learning orientation

Socio-emotional

7. Communication communication, negotiating, politeness, patience

communication, business communication, negotiating Higher-order cognitive7b. Interaction with others

tactfulness, kindness, self-control, presentability, friendliness, politeness, patience, intelligence, sociability

Socio-emotional

8. Teamwork teamwork, cooperation, coordination teamwork skills, team player Socio-emotional9. Motivation motivation enterprising (energetic, dynamic), self-confidence, proactivity,

dedication, initiative, motivation Socio-emotional

10. Job-specific technical

various professional skills and knowledge related to the work performed Technical

11. Computer MS Office/Excel/Word, computer skills, PC user

confident PC user, ability to work in Windows and Internet, MS Office/Excel/Word, basic computer skills, software testing techniques

Technical

12.Russian knowledge of the Russian language Higher-order cognitive13. English or other foreign languages knowledge of English and/or other foreign languages Higher-order cognitive

14. Adaptability n.a. adaptability, ability to adapt quickly, flexibility Socio-emotional15. Leadership n.a. leadership qualities, leadership skills, experience in top management

or in team work management, decision making, management skills, Socio-emotional

65

organizational skillsDriving license driving license (rarely together with own vehicle) TechnicalOther compliance with hygiene and sanitary

rules, good health, good eyesight, physically fit, possibility to travel, without bad habits, without young children, no criminal record

Romanian or EU passport/work permit, sanitary book, access to the Internet, sense of humor, sense of style, no criminal record, having own equipment/ tools/ smartphone/ laptop/ camera/vehicle

n.a.

Gender female, male (preferred) n.a.Age >18, 20-55, 25-45, 30-55, <30 <35, <40,

<45-50, <50, <55, youngn.a.

Notes: Broad skill groups are based on classification suggested by Cunningham and Villasenor (2016) but this authors’ adaptation.

66

Annex 8: The percentage of ANOFM vacancies in which a particular skill is demanded within a 2-digit occupational group (%)

Occupational group(2-digit ISCO)

ISCO

cod

e

B.C. Higher-order cognitive Technical Socio-emotional

Sum

of s

kills

(%)

N o

f vac

anci

es w

ith a

t lea

st

one

requ

irem

ent t

o sk

ills

% o

f vac

anci

es w

ith a

t lea

st

one

requ

irem

ent t

o sk

ills

Mea

n nu

mbe

r of

requ

irem

ents

to sk

ills

Lite

racy

(R

oman

ian)

Prob

lem

solv

ing

Russ

ian

Engl

ish

or o

ther

FL

Com

mun

icati

on

Job-

spec

ific t

echn

ical

Com

pute

r

Wor

k et

hic

Wor

king

inde

pend

ently

Team

wor

k

Moti

vatio

n

Chief executives, senior officials and legislators 11 2.3 2.3 4.6 2 4.6 0.05Administrative and commercial managers 12 4.5 9 13.4 7.5 6 3 43.4 22 32.8 0.43Production and specialized services managers 13 3.6 1.8 10.9 5.5 9.1 1.8 1.8 34.5 13 23.6 0.35Hospitality, retail and other services managers 14 1.7 3.3 18.3 1.7 1.7 3.3 1.7 1.7 33.4 14 23.3 0.33Science and engineering professionals 21 0.7 6.6 13.2 4.6 25.1 29 19.1 0.25Health professionals 22 5.6 5.6 6 5.6 0.06Teaching professionals 23 10.5 4.8 16.1 0.8 2.4 0.8 5.6 41 34 27.4 0.41Business and administration professionals 24 2.5 0.6 1.9 2.8 15.5 5.1 0.6 1.9 30.9 77 24.4 0.31Information and communications technology professionals

25 10 6.7 40 10 16.7 6.7 90.1 16 53.3 0.90

Legal, social and cultural professionals 26 0.5 1.6 1.6 2.7 1.1 7.5 10 5.5 0.08Science and engineering associate professionals 31 3 3 5.9 7.1 3.6 3 3.6 29.2 23 13.6 0.29Health associate professionals 32 1.4 9.9 2.8 14.1 8 11.3 0.14Business and administration associate professionals 33 3.4 5.4 9.8 1 8.3 1 3.4 1 33.3 36 17.7 0.33Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals

34 1.3 2.5 1.3 1.3 6.4 4 5.0 0.06

Information and communications technicians 35 70.7 1.7 69 141.4 42 72.4 1.41General and keyboard clerks 41 3.8 1.3 5 3.8 12.5 3.8 30.2 15 18.8 0.30Customer services clerks 42 0.5 26.3 13.4 0.5 17.7 0.5 0.5 59.4 85 45.7 0.60Numerical and material recording clerks 43 6.3 6.3 2.1 2.1 16.8 6 12.5 0.17Other clerical support workers 44 0 0 0 0Personal service workers 51 1.5 0.2 1.5 4 0.7 2 9.9 32 7.9 0.10

67

Sales workers 52 4.2 2.8 0.3 2.8 10.1 32 8.9 0.10Personal care workers 53 2.8 2.8 0.6 5.1 11.3 14 7.9 0.11Protective services workers 54 1.7 1.7 2.2 0.6 3.9 3.9 1.7 15.7 16 8.8 0.15Market-oriented skilled agricultural workers 61 1.9 1.9 2 1.9 0.02Market-oriented skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers

62 0 0 0 0

Building and related trades workers, excluding electricians

71 8.9 13.4 1.3 23.6 33 14.7 0.24

Metal, machinery and related trades workers 72 16.5 16.5 53 16.5 0.16Handicraft and printing workers 73 30.8 30.8 30.8 3.1 30.8 30.8 7.7 164.8 27 41.5 1.65Electrical and electronic trades workers 74 23.6 2.7 0 0.9 27.2 30 27.3 0.27Food processing, wood working, garment and other craft and related trades workers

75 0.4 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.4 0.4 1.2 3.6 53 2.0 0.04

Stationary plant and machine operators 81 15.4 15.4 15.4 0.2 15.4 0.2 15.4 6 83.4 141 21.7 0.83Assemblers 82 7.3 4.9 4.9 4.9 4.9 1 27.9 17 8.3 0.28Drivers and mobile plant operators 83 0.6 1 0 1.3 2.9 7 2.2 0.03Cleaners and helpers 91 1.1 0 4.3 5.4 14 5.1 0.05Agricultural, forestry and fishery laborers 92 9.4 0 2.8 12.2 44 12.2 0.12Laborers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transport

93 6.5 6.5 6.5 0 6.5 0.3 6.5 0.6 33.4 23 7.4 0.33

Food preparation assistants 94 0.9 0.9 1 0.9 0.01Refuse workers and other elementary workers 96 0.1 3.4 0.9 1.1 5.5 49 5.5 0.06Total % 2.3 0.03 2.33 4.24 0.33 3.13 3.45 0.32 0.07 1.92 1.7 19.8 9.5 0.20

N 225 3 228 416 32 307 338 31 7 188 167 1942 1030

Notes: The sample includes 9,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, excluding vacancies for the work abroad. B.C. = Basic cognitive. Cells with zero values are replaced with empty space.

68

Annex 9: The percentage of ANOFM vacancies in which additional characteristics are required in job description within a 2-digit occupational group (%)

Occupational group(2-digit ISCO)

ISCO

cod

e

Gend

er

Age

Educ

ation

Expe

rienc

e

Oth

er

Driv

ing

licen

se

Sum

of a

ll cr

iteria

, in

clud

ing

skill

s

N o

f vac

anci

es w

ith a

t le

ast o

ne re

quire

men

t

%of

vac

anci

es w

ith a

t le

ast o

ne re

quire

men

t

Mea

n nu

mbe

r of

requ

irem

ents

Chief executives, senior officials and legislators

11 15.9 2.3 22.8 9 20.5 0.23

Administrative and commercial managers

12 16.4 9 6 74.8 32 47.8 0.75

Production and specialized services managers

13 12.7 1.8 1.8 50.8 16 29.1 0.51

Hospitality, retail and other services managers

14 20 10 8.3 71.7 25 41.7 0.75

Science and engineering professionals

21 0.7 11.2 2 0.7 39.7 46 30.3 0.39

Health professionals 22 6.5 1.9 0.9 14.9 10 9.3 0.15Teaching professionals 23 13.7 0.8 55.5 43 34.7 0.56Business and administration professionals

24 0.3 9.8 7.6 0.3 3.5 52.4 114 36.1 0.53

Information and communications technology professionals

25 23.3 3.3 116.7 17 56.7 1.17

Legal, social and cultural professionals

26 0.5 14.2 6.6 28.8 42 23.0 0.29

Science and engineering associate professionals

31 0.6 1.2 7.1 5.9 1.2 45.2 38 22.5 0.45

Health associate professionals 32 1.4 2.8 18.3 11 15.5 0.18Business and administration associate professionals

33 8.3 0.5 1 43.1 47 23.0 0.43

Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals

34 1.3 7.7 5 6.3 0.08

Information and communications technicians

35 141.4 42 72.4 1.41

General and keyboard clerks 41 2.5 32.7 17 21.3 0.33Customer services clerks 42 0.5 13.4 0.5 73.8 105 56.5 0.74Numerical and material recording clerks

43 8.3 2.1 4.2 31.4 10 20.8 0.31

Other clerical support workers 44 0 0 0 0Personal service workers 51 0.7 5.5 2.7 0.2 19 61 15.1 0.23Sales workers 52 0.3 0.3 3.1 0.8 0.3 0.6 15.5 38 10.6 0.15Personal care workers 53 0.6 11.9 17 9.6 0.16Protective services workers 54 0.6 5.5 7.2 0 13.3 1.1 43.4 49 27.1 0.43Market-oriented skilled agricultural workers

61 1.9 2 1.9 0.02

Market-oriented skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers

62 0 0 0 0

69

Building and related trades workers, excluding electricians

71 0.9 9.8 34.3 57 25.4 0.34

Metal, machinery and related trades workers

72 1.9 2.2 0.9 21.5 60 18.6 0.21

Handicraft and printing workers 73 30.8 7.7 203.3 27 41.5 2.03Electrical and electronic trades workers

74 10.9 1.8 39.9 43 39.1 0.49

Food processing, wood working, garment and other craft and related trades workers

75 0.7 6.2 1.9 12.4 584 22.4 0.38

Stationary plant and machine operators

81 0.6 1.5 20 19.4 2 126.9 292 45.0 1.30

Assemblers 82 5.8 5.3 2.4 41.4 28 13.6 0.41Drivers and mobile plant operators

83 0.3 2.2 0.3 27.8 33.5 89 28.4 0.34

Cleaners and helpers 91 0.4 0.7 0.4 6.9 16 5.8 0.11Agricultural, forestry and fishery laborers

92 0.6 9.7 22.5 128 35.4 0.48

Laborers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transport

93 0.6 6.5 2.6 43.1 43 13.9 0.48

Food preparation assistants 94 6.1 1.8 8.8 10 8.8 0.10Refuse workers and other elementary workers

96 0.6 0.7 1.3 3.9 12 72 8.1 0.13

Total % 0.22 0.39 4.87 4.39 1.37 1.75 32.8 22.9 0.41N 22 38 478 430 134 172 3216 2245

Notes: The sample includes 9,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, excluding vacancies for the work abroad. Cells with zero values are replaced with empty space.

70

Annex 10: Examples of job-specific (technical) skills reported by employers in the ANOFM dataset

Occupation (2-digit ISCO) Examples of job-specific (technical) skillsAdministrative and commercial managers, Business and administration professionalsNumerical and material recording clerks

Accounting skills, proficiency in “1-C” Accounting, knowledge of relevant legislation, SAP asset accounting

Science and engineering professionals CorelDraw, Photoshop, CAD, Solidworks; knowledge of technology in electronic engineering products processes; development of technical documentation and reading technical drawings; having a license on occupational safety; knowledge of legislation on metrology;installation/configuration/problem identification in Windows and other operational systems

Personal service workers Proficiency in various massage techniques; technology of cooking; techniques of hair-cutting/coloring/styling

Sales workers Operating cash registers, relevant experience in retail trade (sales skills)

Science and engineering associate professionalsMetal, machinery and related trades workersElectrical and electronic trades workers

Reading of technical drawings; knowledge of the principles of functioning and structure of electric motors, generators, transformators and electric welding equipment; knowledge of the methods of electrical equipment verification, assembly, mounting, maintenance, and protection;Specified qualification category (разряд)

Agricultural, forestry and fishery laborersRefuse workers and other elementary workers

Proficiency in garden and tree cleaning

Notes: The sample includes 10,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018. The table includes only occupations for which job-specific skill is the most requested (see Table 3).

71

Annex 11: Descriptive statistics of wage offers reported by employers in the ANOFM dataset

Sample Indicator Min wage offer Max wage offerN of vacancies with wage equal to 0 or 1 MDL 1,061 1,942

All vacancies N of vacancies with non-0/1 values for wage 9,745 8,864Mean (MDL) 4,693 5,354SD (MDL) 5,330 5,494Min (MDL) 100 450Median (MDL) 2,800 3,500Max (MDL) 31,500 31,500

Only jobs in Moldova N of vacancies with non-0/1 values for wage 8,745 7,864Mean (MDL) 2,943 3,492SD (MDL) 1,339 1,809Min (MDL) 100 450Median (MDL) 2,500 3,200Max (MDL) 31,500 31,500

Notes: The sample includes 10,806 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018.

Annex 12: The determinants of the variation in minimum wage offers reported by employers in the ANOFM dataset

Factor

Proportion of the variance in the minimum wage offer explained

by each factor (%)

Largest contributor(s) in the extended model

Model 1 Model 2 Occupation(38 dummies, reference is occupation 11)

20.5 14.1 2-digit ISCO codes 72, 96, 81

Sector(18 dummies, reference is Agriculture)

11.9 11.1 Education, Manufacturing

Region (4 dummies, reference is Chisinau municipality)

11.7 10.5 North

Ownership (2 dummies, reference is Public) 3.9 3.5 Private (non-foreign)Education(4 dummies, reference is Lower secondary and below)

- 7 Tertiary

Experience(3 dummies, reference is No experience)

- 5 Experience of 5+ years

Number of requirements to skills and individual characteristics (from 0 to 7)

- 1.3

Residual 51.9 47.5Total 100 100

Notes: The sample consists of 9,088 vacancies reported to the ANOFM during December 2017 – February 2018, excluding observations having wage offer equal to 0 or 1 MDL and vacancies for the work abroad. Results obtained using Fields (2003) regression-based decomposition (command “ineqrbd” in Stata). The dependent variable is the logarithm of the minimum wage offer. The Table shows contribution of explanatory variables to the variance in the minimum wage offer for 2 models. The sum of all factors’ contribution is equal to the R-squared.

72

Annex 13: Mapping between Moldovan classification of economic activities (sectors) and categories used in private job portals

Sector (economic activity) CategoryAgriculture AgricultureIndustry Production; Engineers; Working staffConstruction Construction and repairTrade Trade, SalesTransportation and storage Transport and logistics; Drivers; Storage facilitiesAccommodation and food service activities Restaurants, catering services; Tourism, HospitalityInformation and communication IT specialists, Internet; Mass media, journalism,

printing; TelecommunicationsFinancial and insurance activities Accounting, banks, economists; InsuranceReal estate activities Real estateProfessional, technical, administrative and support service activities

Design; Jurisprudence; Jurisprudence and Insurance; Marketing, advertising, PR; Network marketing; Foreign languages; Managers; Psychologists; Staff, HR; Office workers; Security and safety

Public administration Government agenciesEducation Teachers, TrainingsHealth care Medicine, PharmacyArts, entertainment and recreation Beauty salons, Fitness, Sports; Culture, art;

Entertainment, casino, show business; Design, art, entertainment

Other service activities Services, After sales service; Service staff; OthersActivities of households as employers Staff for the housen.a. Work for studentsn.a. Work from homen.a. Work abroadn.a. Top management

73

Annex 14: Descriptive statistics of vacancies scraped from online private job portals during December 2017-February 2018

JOBLIST.MD(N)

RABOTA.MD(N)

Total (N)

Total (%)

Total 11,078 11,813 22,891 100Month of registration

December 2017 500 111 611 2.7January 2018 10,578 8,561 19,139 83.6February 2018 0 3,141 3,141 13.7

Macroregion*Municipality Chisinau 10,241 10,879 21,120 92.3North 528 489 1,017 4.4Center 197 273 470 2.1South 39 70 109 0.5T.A.U. Gagauzia 35 86 121 0.5Transnistria 33 14 47 0.2Unspecified 5 2 7 0.0

SectorAgriculture 104 73 177 0.8Industry 808 1,227 2,035 8.9Construction 406 298 704 3.1Trade 1,886 868 2,754 12.0Transportation and storage 1,567 962 2,529 11.1Accommodation and food service activities 1,098 596 1,694 7.4Information and communication 498 1,047 1,545 6.8Financial and insurance activities 423 741 1,164 5.1Real estate activities 0 139 139 0.6Professional, technical, administrative and support service activities

2,393 3,280 5,673 24.8

Public administration 0 95 95 0.4Education 362 150 512 2.2Health care 312 248 560 2.5Arts, entertainment and recreation 888 284 1,172 5.1Other service activities 333 961 1,294 5.7Activities of households as employers 0 29 29 0.1Work for students 0 329 329 1.4Work from home 0 72 72 0.3Work abroad 0 82 82 0.4Top management 0 332 332 1.5

Occupation (1-digit ISCO)Senior officials and managers 427 726 1,153 5.0Professionals 1,599 3,484 5,083 22.2Technicians and associate professionals 1,238 2,095 3,333 14.6Clerks 684 867 1,551 6.8Service workers and shop and market sales workers 2,710 1,870 4,580 20.0Skilled agricultural workers 18 2 20 0.1Craft and related trades workers 770 514 1,284 5.6Plant and machine operators, and assemblers 835 598 1,433 6.3Elementary occupations 1,045 669 1,714 7.5Unspecified 1,752 988 2,740 12.0

Work scheduleFull-time 5,891 9,796 15,687 68.5Part-time 595 633 1,228 5.4Flexible 2,788 224 3,012 13.2

74

Freelance/ Remote 223 197 420 1.8Shift 1,576 752 2,328 10.2Unspecified 5 211 216 0.9

Required education**Lower secondary 464 6 470 2.1Upper secondary 2,982 452 3,434 15.0Post-secondary, non-tertiary 2,426 957 3,383 14.8Tertiary 1,931 3,646 5,577 24.4No education, Any education 3,224 6,300 9,524 41.6Unspecified 51 452 503 2.2

Required experience<2 years 3,084 1,269 4,353 19.02-5 years 2,327 1,716 4,043 17.75+ years 349 371 720 3.2No experience, Any experience 5,313 7,984 13,297 58.1Unspecified 5 473 478 2.1

Notes: *The macroregions are defined in accordance with the Law no. 438-XVI from 28.12.2006 On regional development in Moldova. Composition of the regions: 1. Municipality Chisinau; 2. North (mun. Balti, Briceni, Donduseni, Drochia, Edinet, Falesti, Floresti, Glodeni, Ocnita, Riscani, Singerei, Soroca); 3. Center (Anenii Noi, Calarasi, Criuleni, Dubasari, Hancesti, Ialoveni, Nisporeni, Orhei, Rezina, Straseni, Soldanesti, Telenesti, Ungheni); 4. South (Basarabeasca, Cahul, Cantemir, Causeni, Cimislia, Leova, Stefan Voda, Taraclia); 5. T.A.U Gagauzia.

** Lower secondary = Incomplete secondary; Upper secondary = Secondary; Post-secondary, non tertiary = Secondary specialized (Medii de specialitate), Incomplete tertiary; Tertiary = Higher, Master’s level, Doctor habilitat.

75

Annex 15: Vacancies from private job portals by 2-digit occupational group

Occupational group (2-digit ISCO) ISCO code

JOBLIST.MD(N)

RABOTA.MD(N)

Total (N)

Total (%)

Business and administration associate professionals 33 852 1,528 2,380 10.4Sales workers 52 1,018 1,050 2,068 9.0Personal service workers 51 1,370 681 2,051 9.0Business and administration professionals 24 556 1,208 1,764 7.7Science and engineering professionals 21 356 975 1,331 5.8Drivers and mobile plant operators 83 675 417 1,092 4.8Legal, social and cultural professionals 26 277 662 939 4.1Hospitality, retail and other services managers 14 313 532 845 3.7Cleaners and helpers 91 511 137 648 2.8General and keyboard clerks 41 341 298 639 2.8ICT professionals 25 186 431 617 2.7Customer services clerks 42 232 352 584 2.6Food processing, wood working, garment and other craft and related trades workers

75 327 211 538 2.4

Refuse workers and other elementary workers 96 254 258 512 2.2Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals

34 111 258 369 1.6

Science and engineering associate professionals 31 111 217 328 1.4Numerical and material recording clerks 43 107 216 323 1.4Metal, machinery and related trades workers 72 206 111 317 1.4Teaching professionals 23 158 138 296 1.3Laborers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transport

93 101 172 273 1.2

Protective services workers 54 135 126 261 1.1Assemblers 82 114 135 249 1.1Production and specialized services managers 13 98 119 217 1.0Health associate professionals 32 149 62 211 0.9Personal care workers 53 187 13 200 0.9Building and related trades workers, excluding electricians

71 120 39 159 0.7

Agricultural, forestry and fishery laborers 92 73 68 141 0.6Food preparation assistants 94 106 34 140 0.6Health professionals 22 66 70 136 0.6Handicraft and printing workers 73 62 73 135 0.6Electrical and electronic trades workers 74 55 80 135 0.6Stationary plant and machine operators 81 16 75 92 0.4Administrative and commercial managers 12 46 46 91 0.4Information and communications technicians 35 15 30 45 0.2Market-oriented skilled agricultural workers 61 16 2 18 0.08Other clerical support workers 44 4 1 5 0.02Market-oriented skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers

62 2 0 2 0.01

Unspecified 1,752 988 2,740 12.0Total 11,078 11,813 22,891 100

Notes: The sample includes 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018. Occupations are sorted by the frequency in the total sample. Occupations with a larger number of vacancies posted at rabota.md than at joblist.md are shaded grey.

76

Annex 16: Top 20 fields of studies in the sample of vacancies from private job portals

EconomicsEngineering and engineering trades (not further defined)

Marketing and advertising (incl. PR)Finance, banking and insurance

Management and administration (incl. logistics)Accounting and taxation

LawMedicine

Journalism and reporting (incl. communication)Education

AgricultureLanguage acquision (incl. foreign languages)Information and Communication Technology

Food processingLiterature and linguistics

Building and civil engineeringElectronics and automation

PharmacyTravel, tourism and leisure

Electricity and energy

0 100 200 300 400 500 600

Number of vacancies

Notes: The sample includes 22,891 vacancies posted to 2 private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018. Information on the required field(s) of studies is extracted from a free-text job description. Fields of studies are classified in accordance with detailed fields of ISCED-F 2013.

77

Annex 17: The percentage of vacancies from private job portals in which a particular skill is demanded within a 2-digit occupational group (%)

Occupational group (2-digit ISCO)

ISCO

cod

e

Basic cognitive

Higher-order cognitive Technical Socio-emotional

Sum

of s

kills

(%)

N o

f vac

anci

es w

ith a

t lea

st

one

requ

irem

ent t

o sk

ills

% o

f vac

anci

es w

ith a

t lea

st

one

requ

irem

ent t

o sk

ills

Mea

n nu

mbe

r of

requ

irem

ents

to sk

ills

Lite

racy

(R

oman

ian)

Num

erac

y

Prob

lem

solv

ing

Russ

ian

Engl

ish

or o

ther

FL

Com

mun

icati

on

Job-

spec

ific t

echn

ical

Com

pute

r

Wor

k et

hic

Wor

king

inde

pend

ently

Abili

ty to

lear

n

Inte

racti

on w

ith o

ther

s

Team

wor

k

Moti

vatio

n

Adap

tabi

lity

Lead

ersh

ip

Administrative and commercial managers

12 65.9 65.9 26.4 38.5 51.6 36.3 22 24.2 1.1 1.1 3.3 3.3 3.3 19.8 362.7 82 90.1 3.63

Production and specialized services managers

13 28.6 1.4 36.4 11.1 23 43.8 34.6 21.7 15.2 0.5 1.8 1.8 6.9 9.7 236.5 171 78.8 2.36

Hospitality, retail and other services managers

14 41.1 1.9 43 22.8 28.6 30.9 35.5 29.2 13.1 3.2 9.5 5.8 5.9 0.2 6.5 277.2 667 78.9 2.77

Science and engineering professionals

21 28.6 0.8 3.6 24 23.1 21.7 64.4 27.3 32.1 14.8 4.4 2.9 5.1 5 1.4 4.1 263.3 1,153 86.6 2.63

Health professionals 22 25 1.5 22.8 12.5 17.6 8.8 14.7 19.9 1.5 4.4 2.2 0.7 1.5 133.1 68 50.0 1.33Teaching professionals 23 30.4 0.3 27.7 34.8 21.3 16.6 10.1 26.7 5.1 9.1 5.4 8.4 2 197.9 221 74.7 1.98Business and administration professionals

24 46.9 0.3 2.9 42.8 28.8 33.8 65.5 40.2 36.1 14.2 2.7 4.2 3.5 7.4 0.9 5 335.2 1,568 88.9 3.35

Information and communications technology professionals

25 15.9 2.9 14.6 40.4 17.7 79.1 42.5 24.6 8.8 3.4 0.6 7.5 5.7 0.5 1.6 265.8 574 93.0 2.66

Legal, social and cultural professionals

26 49.9 3.4 44.6 22.6 29.7 48.6 36.6 36.7 15.3 1.8 6.2 3.2 5.5 0.6 1.4 306.1 810 86.3 3.06

Science and engineering associate professionals

31 29.3 0.9 38.1 22 23.8 41.5 30.2 40.5 15.5 1.8 6.4 7.9 3 0.9 2.1 263.9 259 79.0 2.64

Health associate professionals

32 13.7 13.7 5.7 15.2 20.9 3.3 26.5 7.6 0.5 13.3 5.2 3.3 128.9 107 50.7 1.29

78

Business and administration associate professionals

33 44.3 1.5 47.5 23.7 40.3 42.4 37.1 37 16.1 4.6 7.3 5 7.8 0.2 3.4 318.2 2,082 87.5 3.18

Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals

34 39.8 1.1 42.3 16.8 23.6 42.8 26.6 37.4 19.8 4.9 5.7 7.9 3.5 0.5 3.8 276.5 288 78.1 2.76

Information and communications technicians

35 33.3 26.7 6.7 24.4 57.8 6.7 15.6 8.9 2.2 13.3 11.1 2.2 208.9 41 91.1 2.09

General and keyboard clerks

41 45.1 3.1 41.5 21.4 34.4 28.2 47.3 38.5 8 3.4 10.2 3.4 9.2 0.8 4.2 298.7 480 75.1 2.99

Customer services clerks 42 45.2 1.2 43.3 31 32.4 21.7 36.8 39.2 13.4 3.3 12.2 5 6 0.5 0.9 292.1 480 82.2 2.92Numerical and material recording clerks

43 29.7 39.3 16.1 23.8 35.9 44 44.3 17.3 3.4 2.5 3.4 3.7 1.5 264.9 262 81.1 2.65

Personal service workers 51 18.9 0.1 18 10 11.9 9.2 5.9 21.1 5.8 1.7 6.4 4.3 3.4 2.2 118.9 934 45.5 1.19Sales workers 52 41.2 0.1 0.8 39.5 12.8 40 22.3 23.5 33.6 11.4 3.7 8.7 2.9 6.9 0.2 0.8 248.4 1,501 72.6 2.48Personal care workers 53 10 7 3 4.5 10.5 15 0.5 4 0.5 55 64 32.0 0.55Protective services workers

54 23.4 1.5 22.6 5 10 17.6 10.3 41.4 10.3 0.8 8.8 3.4 1.1 1.9 158.1 161 61.7 1.58

Building and related trades workers, excluding electricians

71 4.4 4.4 3.1 15.1 2.5 13.2 2.5 0 0.6 1.3 0.6 0.6 48.3 47 29.6 0.48

Metal, machinery and related trades workers

72 1.3 0.9 0.6 1.9 17.4 3.5 25.2 6 0.9 0.3 0.6 58.6 125 39.4 0.59

Handicraft and printing workers

73 34.1 29.6 37.8 25.9 38.5 76.3 42.2 7.4 5.9 4.4 5.2 3.7 0.7 0.7 312.4 124 91.9 3.13

Electrical and electronic trades workers

74 5.2 6.7 3 6.7 25.9 12.6 25.2 5.9 0.7 0.7 0.7 93.3 63 46.7 0.93

Food processing, wood working, garment and other craft and related trades workers

75 6.5 4.6 2 5 9.7 2.2 25.8 7.4 3 1.1 2.8 1.3 0.2 0.2 71.8 210 39.0 0.72

Stationary plant and machine operators

81 8.7 7.6 2.2 3.3 21.7 14.1 15.2 6.5 1.1 2.2 82.6 39 42.4 0.83

Assemblers 82 5.6 6.4 1.6 4 25.7 0.4 20.9 14.5 1.6 1.2 2 0.8 84.7 122 49.0 0.85Drivers and mobile plant 83 15.9 2.6 12.7 8.4 12.6 14.6 9.2 27.5 9.2 1.2 4.6 3.7 1.1 0.7 124 512 46.9 1.24

79

operatorsCleaners and helpers 91 3.4 2.8 1.9 2 3.9 0.3 25.2 6.3 0.2 1.9 1.4 0.3 0.2 49.8 201 31.0 0.50Agricultural, forestry and fishery laborers

92 21.3 12.1 1.4 5.7 27 20.6 48.2 3.5 0.7 6.4 0.7 147.6 87 61.7 1.48

Laborers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transport

93 7.7 2.6 2.2 4.8 14.7 0.4 34.8 9.9 1.8 2.6 2.9 1.8 86.2 122 44.7 0.86

Food preparation assistants

94 1.4 0.7 0.7 1.4 12.9 9.3 2.9 2.9 0.7 32.9 24 17.1 0.33

Refuse workers and other elementary workers

96 20.3 19.7 1 10 8.4 1.2 42 3.3 1.4 7.8 2.3 1.4 118.8 284 55.5 1.19

Unspecified 15.2 1.3 14 12.1 13.1 16.7 14.7 21.2 5.7 1.6 3.3 2.4 2.8 0.1 2 126.2 1,364 49.8 1.26Total % 28.7 0.1 1.4 27.6 16.3 22.4 30.6 22.8 30.2 10.5 2.5 5.5 3.8 4.5 0.3 2.4 209.6 66.8 2.10

N

6,57

0

20 328

6,32

9

3,73

2

5,12

5

7,00

3

5,22

2

6,91

9

2,40

5

575

1,25

8

864

1,03

8

79 539

48,0

06

15,3

01

Notes: The sample includes 22,891 vacancies posted to private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018. Cells with zero values are replaced with empty space. Other clerical support workers (code 44), Market-oriented skilled agricultural workers (code 61), and Market-oriented skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers (code 62) are removed from the table because of a small sample size but they are counted in “Overall”. “Overall” also includes vacancies with unspecified occupational group.

80

Annex 18: The percentage of vacancies from private job portals in which additional characteristics are required in job description within a 2-digit occupational group (%)

Occupational group(2-digit ISCO)

ISCO

cod

e

Educ

ation

Expe

rienc

e

Driv

ing

licen

se

Oth

er

Sum

of a

ll cr

iteria

, in

clud

ing

skill

s

N o

f vac

anci

es w

ith a

t le

ast o

ne re

quire

men

t*

%of

vac

anci

es w

ith a

t le

ast o

ne re

quire

men

t*

Mea

n nu

mbe

r of

requ

irem

ents

*

Administrative and commercial managers

12 51.7 56 2.2 472.6 83 91.2 4.73

Production and specialized services managers

13 25.8 36.4 4.1 1.8 304.6 177 81.6 3.05

Hospitality, retail and other services managers

14 30.1 28.5 5.2 2.1 343.1 705 83.4 3.44

Science and engineering professionals

21 38.6 41.5 8.2 2.9 354.5 1206 90.6 3.56

Health professionals 22 37.5 27.9 198.5 94 69.1 2.03Teaching professionals 23 26.8 27.4 0.7 0.7 253.5 240 81.1 2.55Business and administration professionals

24 44.6 43.5 3.2 1.4 427.9 1626 92.2 4.30

Information and communications technology professionals

25 19.7 48.1 1.5 0.3 335.4 579 93.8 3.36

Legal, social and cultural professionals

26 34 32.6 3.7 2.9 379.3 836 89.0 3.80

Science and engineering associate professionals

31 41.5 45.1 21 5.5 377 278 84.8 3.79

Health associate professionals 32 26.5 28 183.4 131 62.1 1.85Business and administration associate professionals

33 29.7 33.4 10.5 4.3 396.1 2134 89.7 3.97

Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals

34 28.7 30.9 1.6 3.3 341 297 80.5 3.42

Information and communications technicians

35 15.5 53.3 6.7 284.4 43 95.6 2.87

General and keyboard clerks 41 29.5 21 2 351.2 494 77.3 3.55Customer services clerks 42 26.2 24.5 0.2 1 344 491 84.1 3.45Numerical and material recording clerks

43 25.1 31 4.6 0.6 326.2 278 86.1 3.27

Personal service workers 51 9.7 26.6 1.1 0.6 156.9 1124 54.8 1.59Sales workers 52 18.1 28.9 4.1 2.6 302.1 1551 75.0 3.03Personal care workers 53 3.5 12.5 71 75 37.5 0.71Protective services workers 54 13.7 18.8 2.3 3.8 196.7 172 65.9 1.97Building and related trades workers, excluding electricians

71 4.4 19.5 4.4 1.9 78.5 65 40.9 0.80

Metal, machinery and related trades workers

72 9.1 26.5 0.9 95.1 159 50.2 0.96

Handicraft and printing workers 73 33.4 35.6 5.2 2.2 388.8 126 93.3 3.91Electrical and electronic trades workers

74 20.7 37 14.8 3 168.8 88 65.2 1.70

Food processing, wood 75 6.9 27.1 0.2 106 277 51.5 1.10

81

working, garment and other craft and related trades workersStationary plant and machine operators

81 16.4 22.8 3.3 125.1 49 53.3 1.27

Assemblers 82 21.7 36.9 18.5 8.8 170.6 179 71.9 1.71Drivers and mobile plant operators

83 8.5 27.2 23.9 2.9 186.5 661 60.5 1.87

Cleaners and helpers 91 0.5 9.4 0.2 0.2 60.1 236 36.4 0.61Agricultural, forestry and fishery laborers

92 26.2 34 0.7 208.5 91 64.5 2.09

Laborers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transport

93 6.6 11 3.3 1.8 108.9 134 49.1 1.10

Food preparation assistants 94 0.7 5.7 39.3 28 20.0 0.39Refuse workers and other elementary workers

96 4.7 18.8 23.4 8 173.7 330 64.5 1.76

Unspecified 10.7 15.3 2.2 1.7 156.1 1489 54.3 1.57Total % 21.7 28.7 5.6 2.1 267.7 72 2.69

N

4,96

1

6,57

7

1,27

2

490

61,3

06

16,5

30

Notes: The sample includes 22,891 vacancies posted to private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018. Cells with zero values are replaced with empty space. Other clerical support workers (code 44), Market-oriented skilled agricultural workers (code 61), and Market-oriented skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers (code 62) are removed from the table because of a small sample size but they are counted in “Overall”. “Overall” also includes vacancies with unspecified occupational group. *Including skills shown in Annex 17.

82

Annex 19: Examples of job-specific (technical) reported by employers in vacancies scraped from private job portals by 2-digit occupational group

Occupational group(2-digit ISCO)

Examples of job-specific (technical) skills

Administrative and commercial managers

12 Proficiency in “1-C” AccountingKnowledge of relevant legislation (banking, taxation, labor, occupational health and safety, etc.) and documentation, HR systems, accounting, markets, business processes, production processes, construction projects, product certification, property evaluation, etc.Skills in sales, SMM, online marketing, project management, market analysis, HR management, procurement analysis, etc.

Production and specialized services managers

13

Hospitality, retail and other services managers

14

Science and engineering professionals

21 Proficiency in graphics or 3D design software: Photoshop, Autocad, CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator, 3ds Max, Adobe Indesign, Solidworks, SketchUp, Adobe Flash, Autodesk Revit, Archicad, etc.Knowledge of relevant legislation (labor, occupational health and safety, energy sector, etc.) and documentation, specific production technologies, equipment, technical requirements, etc.Knowledge of HFC network construction, TCP/IP protocolProficiency in “1-C” AccountingComputer repairing/maintenance skills

Health professionals 22 Knowledge of laboratory medicine, pharmacologyLogopedic skills; Assessment of medical records

Teaching professionals 23 Teaching skills; Visual programming skills (Scratch, Blockly); Knowledge of robotics and hardware; certificate (fitness, driving)

Business and administration professionals

24 Proficiency in “1-C” AccountingKnowledge of relevant legislation (taxation, accounting, banking, labor) and documentation, accounting, markets, products, business processesSkills in SMM, online marketing, project management, market analysis, B2B sales, etc.Proficiency in Photoshop, CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator and other graphics software

Information and communications technology professionals

25 Proficiency in php, java, html/css, javascript/ajax, .net, c#, python, mysql; oop, web services, xml/xslt, apache, linux; html5, css3, js (es2015); symphony 3, laravel, zendKnowledge of mvc architecture; pre/postprocessors (less, stylus, postcss); lamp stack (linux, apache, mysql, php); of version control systems such as git; of agile development and tools such as jira; of databases and data modeling/design techniques; data interface protocols; database software installation; database tuningSkills in using automation instruments (grunt, gulp, webpack, yeoman); in using libraries and frameworks (angular, ember, react, vue.js, etc.)

Legal, social and cultural professionals

26 Knowledge of civil law, commercial law, labor law, public finance law, financial law, administrative law, etc.Proficiency in “1-C” Accounting; Photoshop, CorelDRAW, Adobe IllustratorCopyright skills

Science and engineering associate professionals

31 Proficiency in Autocad, Solidworks, Archicad, Autodesk Revit etc.Reading of technical drawingsKnowledge of electronics, specific production technologies, equipment, systems, principles, norms and regulations, etc.

Health associate professionals 32 Massage techniquesBusiness and administration 33 Proficiency in “1-C” Accounting

83

associate professionals Knowledge of real estate market, accounting, tax law, labor lawOffice equipment skills, documentation management skills, business correspondence skills, Internet/email/Outlook/Windows OS skills, typing skills, sales skills, information search skills

Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals

34 SMM skills, Copyright skillsProficiency in Photoshop, CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator; “1-C” AccountingKnowledge of labor law, accounting, health and safety; anatomy, physiology, psychology

Information and communications technicians

35 Proficiency in html, css, javascript, python, objective-c, jquery, database managementVideo editing skills, cable networks skills

General and keyboard clerks 41 Office equipment skills, documentation management skills, business correspondence skills, Internet/email/Outlook/Windows OS skills, making inventory skillsProficiency in “1-C” Accounting; in Photoshop, CorelDRAWKnowledge of accounting, business processes, labor law, warehouse logistics, tax invoices

Customer services clerks 42Numerical and material recording clerks

43

Personal service workers 51 Massage, manicure, hairdressing skillsProficiency in “1-C” AccountingTechnology of cooking

Sales workers 52 Operating cash registersSales skills (including B2B), online marketing, SMM skills, promotion skills Proficiency in “1-C” Accounting; Photoshop, CorelDRAW; php, javascript; Internet/WebBroser

Personal care workers 53 Ability to work with (small) childrenProtective services workers 54 Knowledge of criminal and civil law; Physical fitness; Military idBuilding and related trades workers, excluding electricians

71 Knowledge of construction technology, wood processing technology, fiber optic networks,

Metal, machinery and related trades workers

72 Knowledge of car structure and car diagnostics, autoelectrical systems, auto locksmith skillsWelding, metalworking, sewing machine maintenance, agrotechnical repairing skills

Handicraft and printing workers

73 Knowledge of fine machinery, flexographical equipment, construction methodsArtistic photo processing skills, Proficiency in Photoshop, CoreDRAWProficiency in “1-C” Accounting

Electrical and electronic trades workers

74 Electrical installation skills, electrical schemes reading skills, welding skillsKnowledge of electromechanics, gas and fuel boilers, electrical networksReading of technical drawings and electric circuits

Food processing, wood working, garment and other craft and related trades workers

75 Sewing, cooking confectionery, furniture assembly skillsKnowledge of nutrition hygiene standards; of iso 9001

Stationary plant and machine operators

81 Working with electrical tools, electrical installation skillsReading of technical drawings and documentationKnowledge of production technologies, equipment, processesCable network skills (ethernet)

Assemblers 82

Drivers and mobile plant operators

83 Driver certificates (cpi, cpc, adr), driver card (tachograph), cargo expedition skillsKnowledge of car structure and maintenance, motor mechanics

84

Notes: The sample includes 22,891 vacancies posted to private job portals during December 2017 – February 2018.

Annex 20: Percentage of vacancies posted at JOBLIST.MD having requirement to Romanian and/or Russian languages by 2-digit occupational group (%)

Administrative and commercial managersHospitality, retail and other services managers

Health professionalsBusiness and administration professionals

Legal, social and cultural professionalsHealth associate professionals

Legal, social, cultural and related associate professionalsGeneral and keyboard clerks

Numerical and material recording clerksSales workers

Protective services workersMetal, machinery and related trades workers

Electrical and electronic trades workersStationary plant and machine operators

Drivers and mobile plant operatorsAgricultural, forestry and fishery labourers

Food preparation assistantsUnspecified

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Only Romanian Only Russian Both

Percentagies of vacancies at JOBLIST.MD

Notes: The sample includes 11,078 vacancies posted at JOBLIST.MD during December 2017 – February 2018.

85