Living in Romania

Romania has built a real reputation in IT and engineering, and those fields, along with construction, are where an outsider stands the best chance. Tax takes a more noticeable bite than in much of the region, yet what reaches your account still stretches to a modest cushion once the bills are paid. The catch is access. Hiring leans heavily on local networks, and without one the door is slow to open even for strong candidates, so the country rewards the specialist who pushes through and asks the same of everyone else.

Romania is one of Europe's largest sources of emigrants, with about 4.6M Romanians living abroad against 584K foreign-born residents at home. The diaspora has grown a steep 30% over the past decade and concentrates in Western Europe — Germany (968.7K), Italy, and the United Kingdom hold the largest communities.