Romania
Min. wage
(x12 payments)
RON 4,325 /mo
About the minimum wage
Employer tax
Annual leave
20 days
Learn about annual leave
Notice period
20-45 days (by role)
Termination and notice info
Updated
Sep 2026
The indefinite-term contract (contract individual de muncă pe durată nedeterminată) is the standard and legally preferred form of employment in Romania under Law No. 53/2003 (the Labour Code). It must be concluded in writing, in Romanian, before the employee starts work, and registered in the national employee register (REGES-Online) before the first working day. It sets out job title (matched to an official occupation code), workplace, duties, salary, working time, and leave entitlements, and continues indefinitely until terminated on a legally recognized ground.
Fixed-term contracts (contract pe durată determinată) may only be used for specific situations defined by the Labour Code, such as replacing an absent employee, a temporary increase in activity, seasonal work, or a specific project/campaign. They generally may not exceed 36 months in total (including successive renewals), and no more than 3 successive fixed-term contracts may normally be concluded between the same employer and employee for the same role, except in defined exceptions.
The standard working week is 40 hours over 5 days (8 hours/day). Total working time, including overtime, may not exceed 48 hours per week on average over a reference period (normally 4 months). Overtime must generally be compensated with paid time off within 60/90 days, or, if that is not possible, with a salary premium of at least 75% of the base salary.
Under Article 31 of the Labour Code, indefinite-term contracts may include a probation period of up to 90 calendar days for standard/execution positions and up to 120 calendar days for management positions (30 days for persons with disabilities). Only one probation period is allowed per role with the same employer. For fixed-term contracts, probation is capped on a sliding scale tied to the contract's duration (e.g., 5 working days for contracts of up to 3 months, up to 30 working days for longer terms). Either party may terminate during probation by written notice, without cause and without following the ordinary dismissal procedure.
Romania has no statutory requirement for a 13th- or 14th-month salary. Any such payment is discretionary and would only be owed if promised in an individual employment contract, internal policy, or applicable collective bargaining agreement. Year-end/Christmas performance bonuses are a common voluntary practice among employers but are not mandated by law.
Job titles used in Romanian employment contracts must correspond to a code in the Romanian Classification of Occupations (Clasificarea Ocupațiilor din România, COR), maintained jointly by the Ministry of Labour and the National Institute of Statistics. If the intended role/title does not already exist in the COR nomenclature, the employer must first request that a new occupation code be added before the contract can be validly registered in REGES-Online.
For employees under normal working conditions, the employer's only mandatory statutory contribution is the Work Insurance Contribution (Contribuția Asiguratorie pentru Muncă, CAM) at 2.25% of gross salary, which funds unemployment insurance, the medical-leave guarantee fund, the wage-guarantee fund, work-accident/occupational-disease coverage, and labor-inspection activities. Employer social insurance (CAS) is 0% for normal conditions, but employers must additionally contribute 4% (for 'particular'/arduous conditions) or 8% (for 'special'/hazardous conditions) of gross salary where the role is classified as such.
Employees contribute 25% of gross salary to the public pension system (Contribuția de Asigurări Sociale, CAS — a portion of which may be redirected to a mandatory private Pillar II pension fund) and 10% of gross salary to health insurance (Contribuția de Asigurări Sociale de Sănătate, CASS), for a combined statutory social contribution of 35%. A separate flat 10% personal income tax also applies to salary after deducting these contributions and any personal allowance, but this is a tax rather than a social contribution.
In addition to statutory leave, employees are entitled to the following statutory benefits:
Romania funds its social security system through separate employer and employee contributions on gross salary:
Romania does not operate a stand-alone, separately-rated employer workers' compensation premium for standard employment. Work-accident and occupational-disease insurance coverage is bundled into the single 2.25% Work Insurance Contribution (CAM) paid by the employer on gross salary.
Romanian law does not mandate a general statutory severance payment for individual dismissals.
Romania has no statutory 13th- or 14th-month salary requirement. Any additional end-of-year payment is entirely discretionary unless:
Many employers voluntarily pay a Christmas/year-end performance bonus, but this is a market practice rather than a legal obligation.
P.S. our team speaks multiple languages and we'd love to chat in your preferred language if requested.
Your employee's hours, time off, holidays, bonuses, and commissions are automatically calculated into payroll. RemoFirst will invoice you in either US Dollars (USD), Euros (EUR), British Pounds (GBP), Canadian Dollars (CAD), Australian Dollars (AUD), or Singapore Dollars (SGD) around the 15th of each month to make sure your employees are paid on time. To make it even easier, you can summarize your entire global team's salaries to aggregate them into one payment (instead of many individual payments).
Unlike full-time employees, contractors work on projects with multiple companies at a given time and are technically self-employed. Full-time employees are solely focused on their employer and usually receive benefits (such as health insurance, equity or stock options, and time off) as an additional form of compensation. While it can be cheaper to work with international contractors instead of paying benefits to a full-time employee, you run the risk of misclassification. It's recommended to work with an EOR for contractor onboarding and payments, so you can know that your international contractors are paid compliantly and on time.
Whenever the employee or employer has a question about, or anything else related to international employment, they can speak with our customer support team to get answers from our team of experts.
