Employment rate prognosis on the basis of the development environment trend displayed by years-clusters

The authors analyze the dynamics of the employment rate in Romania and propose a forecast model for it. In the paper we start with the hypothesis that the dynamics of the employment rate has a specific trend displayed by years-clusters differentiated on the value and the sign of the dynamics indexes of the phenomena by which we define the economic environment. The forecast method that we propose takes into consideration the environment conditions in which the studied phenomenon evolves and it implies the use of statistical methods of multivariate analysis (Principal Component Analysis and Discriminant Analysis). The application of such a forecast method supposes an algorithm that implies several stages: (1) the evaluation and synthesis of the inter-relations among the phenomena by which we describe the development environment employment rate dynamics; (2) the identification of the years-cluster to which the desired forecast horizon is classified; (3) the estimation of the employment rate dynamics for the specified forecast horizon. The proposed forecast model, examining the development environment of the influence factors, may be used for simulating forecast alternatives that can be considered for founding the economic development strategies.