Romania’s research and development workforce increased by 3.77% in 2021 from 2020, to 47,011 employees, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INS), Agerpres informs.

Of the total workforce, 21,617 were women, which represents 46%.

By sector, most of the R&D employees (40.5%) worked in higher education, (31.8%) business, (26.9%) the public sector and ( 0.8%) in the private non-profit sector.

By jobs in 2021, the largest proportion of the R&D workforce was made up of researchers (62.4%), followed by other categories of employees (21.6%) and technicians and associate professionals (16 .0%). The highest share of researchers was reported in higher education (51.9%).

The scientific fields with the largest share of the R&D workforce were engineering and technological sciences (51.4%) and natural and exact sciences (17.8%), while humanities had the smallest share, at 3.4%.

By educational attainment, 85.8% of the workforce had higher training and 14.2% had other level of training (exclusively higher).

According to INS, 72.9% of Romania’s R&D workforce in 2021 worked full-time.

Most of the researchers in the public and higher education sectors were aged between 35 and 44.

Romania’s 2021 R&D spending totalled RON 5.616 billion, or 0.48% of its gross domestic product (GDP), of which 0.19% in the public sector and 0.29% in the private sector.

Current expenses made up 91.4% of the total R&D expenses, and capital expenses were 8.6% of the total expenses.

By research activity, there were fundamental research, applied research and experimental development, with applied research getting 54.2% of the spending in 2021.

The main sources of R&D financing in 2021 were companies (51.8%) and public funds (including general public university funds), at 31.6%. Foreign funds contributed 12.6% toward funding Romania’s R&D spending in 2021.

Agerpres