Brief Depiction Of The Local Recreation Labour Market. A Comparative Approach Between France And Romania

Recreation fulfils two functions in terms of labour economics: (1) as a commodity, it participates in the formation of national wealth by creating jobs, and (2) through its purpose, it boosts the workforce “re-creation” in all economic sectors by having a major contribution to people’s recovery, therefore reducing the psychosocial risks and creating premises for improvement of labour productivity. The present paper focuses on the first topic regarding the labour economics of recreation, namely the workforce operating within the sector and puts into comparative perspective two European Union member states: France and Romania. While in France the enterprises specialised in providing artistic, cultural, sports, entertainment or gambling and betting activities form a well-established and efficient economic sector, in Romania they make for an emerging and fast growing industry. Results will show that the local recreation sectors in the two countries have rather different development orientations at macroeconomic level - while in France the tendency seems to be increasing the number of workers per business, Romania rather shows an orientation towards creating numerous scattered micro businesses. With respect to employment, the local recreation sector reveals to be highly unusual in terms of working hours, heterogeneity and variety of professions, and lack of formalised job offer. However, these abnormalities are overridden by the superior intrinsic working conditions and the prolonged work sustainability.