3. High-quality of human resources

In 2009, the population of West Region was 1,919,434 inhabitants, which represented 8.94% of the population of Romania. In 2009, the total working age population (15-64 yrs age group) numbered 1.373.449 people. Of this total, the economically active population counted 867.000 people, of which 94% represented the employed population.

The competitiveness of the Eastern Europe is confirmed also by the labour costs, represented by the weekly average income in the private sector that is evaluated for Romania at 106 Euros (source FeDEE, 2010).

In West Region, the professional qualification is provided by the public education system during high school and university, ensuring a very good coverage of all the qualification domains (specializations and trades) at all qualification levels. The total employed population has the highest proportion of people with secondary education degrees - 37.7% -, followed by professionally trained people, representing 26.6% of the total. In the same time, an increasing value of 17.4% of the working age employed population (15-64 years old) in 2009, have university degrees.

West Region's industrial infrastructure has been sustained also by a high-quality education and research infrastructure, centered on Politehnica University of Timişoara, one of the most prestigious technical universities in the South-East European space.

The sound professional qualification of West Region's labour force is attained in the 14 universities of the region (7 state and 7 private universities) and through an extended network of technical education providers. Along with the professional qualification, the multi-linguism that characterises the multi-ethnic population of the region and the good knowledge of foreign languages have been other favourable factors to foreign investments in West Region. The dynamics of the university education is given by the number of graduates that reached in 2009 a total of 20,789.  

In this respect, it is worth mentioning that there are 12 high-schools in the region that award high-school diplomas in five different languages (German, Hungarian, Serbian, Slovakian, and Croatian) and, as of 1989, there are also high-schools of international language teaching. Moreover, the universities of the region provide courses in German and English for certain specializations.

The region's research institutions cover a wide variety of scientific fields, such as:  rolling stock construction (railroad cars), machine construction, vine-growing, forestry, ironwork and metallurgy, mining and mining security, welding and material testing, chemistry and electrochemistry, physics, ecology, constructions, public health, hydraulic machines, agriculture, medicines, social sciences, etc.