THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF UNEMPLOYMENT AT LOCALITIES DESEGREGATION LEVEL. CASE STUDY FOR SOUTH MUNTENIA REGION - ROMANIA

The fifth Cohesion Report highlighted the strategic perspective of the new cohesion policy, expressed by the added territorial cohesion to the twin goals of economic and social cohesion”.The expected contribution of the cohesion policy is strongly linked to overcoming the crisis, reducing disparities and reaching the ambitious objectives of Europe 2020 Strategy.Unemployment represents the reverse of the medal, a concept and a measure at the intersection of many dimensions, complex and with a large spectrum of interpretations. The spatial dimension of the unemployment was relatively recently addressed by new regional theories, which focused on its: geographical/spatial concentration [Alonso-Villar O. and Del R o C (2008)], agglomeration, returns and spatial unemployment disparities [Suedekum J. (2004)] with aspects of dynamic [Martin R. (1997)], persistence, factors, regional policy rethinking [Chisholm M. (1976)], convergence/divergence of regional disparities [Marshall (1920), Krugman (1991) and Krugman/Venables (1995)), etc]. Overman and Puga (2002) bring empirical evidences regarding the spatial effects of Unemployment clusters across European regions and countries”. Following Niebuhr idea, by measuring the spatial autocorrelation, regions marked by high unemployment as well as areas characterised by low unemployment tend to cluster in space”(Niebuhr, 2005). Therefore, we analysed the case of intra-regional unemployment disparities at the region level (NUTS2 level - for the case of South Muntenia Region), by using the finest possible disaggregated level for data - the localities. The interest to measure the intraregional unemployment clusters is based on (Goschin, Roman, Ileanu, 2008) the characteristic of the current state and dynamics of regional disparities in Romania descried as “low amplitude of both interregional and intra-regional disparities”, with the distinction that, “intra-regional disparities are much higher than the inter-regional disparities.”Next to agglomeration and persistence of unemployment in some specific areas, the crisis period and its persistence during the period 2009-2010, emphasized the European tendency of increasing regional disparities”.. In order to better respond to the crisis` pressure, Romania, started in 2010 a massive process of budgetary sector restructuring, folowed by important exits from employment to unemployment. The significant number of persons without a job suddenly increased the pressure over the labour market insitutionsand diminished the dynamics of the labour market (induced by the limited occupati