Country pillars
The ESI measures countries’ “distance to the ideal” performance. This ideal performance is chosen as the highest achieved by any country over a period of 7 years. The ideal performance is scaled to be 100 and the scores of all countries are then computed and compared to that. Basis of the ESI are 15 individual indicators from various international datasets. The scores are calculated across countries at the indicators’ level. The scores are then averaged at the various layers and finally the Index score is formed. To illustrate, an Index (or pillar, sub-pillar etc.) score of 65 suggests that the country has reached 65% of the ideal performance. Thus, there is still 35% (100-65) room for improvement. A score of 100 corresponds to achieving the ‘frontier’, that is an aspirational target performance for that indicator. A score of 0 corresponds to a lowest-case performance. This page shows specific information on the scores achieved by the chosen country across pillars, sub-pillars and indicators. Below, you can find a short commentary on country’s skills system performance over time and the ESI 2024 scores.
Romania: 2024 scores and progress over time
Romania ranked 28th of 31 countries in the European Skills Index in 2024, with a total score of 32.8. At the pillar level, it ranked 30th in Skills Development (score: 34), 31st in Skills Activation (score: 9.4) and 5th in Skills Matching (score: 70.2).
The highest-ranking indicators of Romania, in comparison with other countries, are Low-wage workers (ISCED 5-8) (2.62%, rank 2nd) and Qualification mismatch (26.1%, rank 7th). On the other hand, its weakest indicators are Early leavers from training (9.8%, rank 31st) and High digital skills (10.3%, rank 31st).
Over the last seven years the overall rank of Romania has decreased from 26th place in 2017, a drop of 2 places. In that time, its overall score has increased from 28.2 to 32.8. The indicators that have improved the most (in terms of their normalised scores, and accounting for indicator directions) are Long-term unemployment (3.6% in 2017 to 2.2% in 2024), and Upper secondary attainment (and above) (70.6% in 2017 to 79.3% in 2024). The indicators that have shown the greatest declines are Activity rate (aged 20-24) (49.2% in 2017 to 44.2% in 2024), and Low-wage workers (ISCED 5-8) (1.4% in 2017 to 2.6% in 2024).
Note that these figures may refer to imputed data points.