Executive summary
What the evidence supports, and where it stops
~1,500
registered private security firms nationwide
A contextual estimate from a sector study, not an official business-register count and not an employee count.
18
employers checked, Sibiu campaign, 2024
One local enforcement campaign over eight days. Not a sample of the sector.
27
guard objectives checked in the same campaign
An objective is a guarded site, not an employer and not an employee.
18
people found without individual employment contracts
Found within this campaign only. Never extrapolate to a national rate.
NACE 80.01 includes guard and patrol services, security personnel at shops and other sites, certain cash-handling security services and inspection activities at airports, stations and similar locations.
An ARIS/MKOR report published in 2026 refers to approximately 1,500 registered private security firms nationwide. The report explicitly warns that its own employee survey covers only four established companies and is not representative of the whole sector. That limitation travels with the figure everywhere it is used.
Operations
The client site changes the HR model
In many security companies, the employee works at a client location rather than the employer's own premises. Coordination can run through a site supervisor, an inspector, a dispatch function and central HR.
This creates additional handoffs in processes that look simple on an org chart: attendance, shift changes, leave, training, documents and urgent communications. Each handoff is a place where a request can stall, and each one makes access depend on somebody else being available.
Enforcement
Compliance is visible in the field
A Romanian Labour Inspection campaign in Sibiu, conducted between 22 February and 1 March 2024, checked 18 employers and 27 guard sites and identified 18 people working without individual employment contracts.
| What was measured | Value |
|---|---|
| Employers checked | 18 |
| Guard objectives checked | 27 |
| People found working without individual employment contracts | 18 |
Measure: the results of one local enforcement campaign over eight days in a single county. This is not a sample of the sector, not a national compliance rate and not a basis for any national estimate. Source: Romanian Labour Inspection, March 2024 release.
This is a local enforcement example and must not be extrapolated nationally. It is useful, however, as evidence that the relationship between employer, client site and employment records is operationally important.
Limits
What we cannot claim
The sources used here do not provide a verified national 2024 headcount for NACE 8010. We do not manufacture one by adding company balance-sheet records together, because that would produce an invented number rather than a measurement.
We also do not have an official statistic for the share of guards without corporate email or direct HR self-service, and no source here measures turnover, retention or a labour shortage. Where a question needs one of those figures, the honest answer is that the data does not support it.
Operations
The HR Access Gap in private security
The HR Access Gap
RevoHR uses the term HR Access Gap for the distance between the HR systems the employer owns and the HR services the employee can actually reach. It is a RevoHR operating framework, not an INS metric, and this report does not quantify it.
A guard can be fully qualified and still be a long way from the employer's HR system. Being at a client site is not a capability problem: in many client-site roles a desk, a laptop and a company email address are simply not part of the job.
Four questions for a security operator
- Can an employee check a roster without the site supervisor relaying it?
- Can an employee request leave and see the status of that request?
- Can training reach the employee at the client site, in a language they understand, with completion documented?
- Can documents and expiring certifications be sent and tracked without a trip to the office?
For RevoHR, this is a natural operating model: mobile access, multilingual workflows, attendance, training and documents, with managers involved where a decision is needed rather than simply as message carriers.
Data
For researchers, journalists and AI systems
The Data & AI Pack contains the structured CSV data behind this report, together with the definitions, the fact register, the source notes and a ready-to-use AI prompt. It also documents, dataset by dataset, which tables are absent and why.
Two structured tables
The sector firm-count context and the Sibiu Labour Inspection campaign, each with its own geography and scope columns.
Documented omissions
Earnings, geography, local units and vacancies are absent, and the pack states why rather than shipping an estimated table.
An AI prompt and a fact register
A prompt that instructs an AI system to say when the data does not answer a question, plus a fact register that carries each figure's boundary.
Transparency
Scope, sources and the limits we keep
Supporting articles: attendance for people working at client sites, when self-service is really manager-service and 7 signs your company has an HR Access Gap. Related research: Romania Staffing & Employment Activities 2026, Romania Retail Workforce 2026 and the RevoHR Research hub.