Internet index of job vacancies

The project is dedicated to the design of the internet index of job vacancies based on the number of new online employment ads published on moj-posao.net, posao.hr and on the employment exchange of the Croatian Employment Service.   

The number of job vacancies is the indicator of current and future work demand. In the literature, the existence of the connection between the change of number of job vacancies and growth of the employed is confirmed. Apart of being useful information for employers and employees because it reflects the current state on job market, the number of job vacancies is an important indicator of the current state of business cycle and as such it is extremely useful to the government and ministries in creating and implementing public policies, in economic modeling, employment forecasting and forcasting of the rate of economic growth.   

In Croatia, this type of index doesn't exist, nor is it possible to determine the total number of job vacancies in some other way. There is no timely and comprehensive information on the number of job vacancies, which means we don't have the insight into the real situation on job market. Croatian Employment Service publishes the monthly statistics on new job vacancies, but since 2002 the employers haven’t been obligated to publish job ads on the Croatian Employment Service, so this statistics is incomplete. Since we will be using big data approach and real time information, this index represents a novelty in country's statistics.   

The objective of this project is to develop the methodology for collecting information on job vacancies and create database from which it would be possible to calculate the index of job vacancies regularly and continuously.   

Monitoring and downloading of job ads published on most visited websites for job searching is automatized. This procedure is periodic and automatized in order to monitor the details of job searching in systematic manner. Besides the number of job vacancies, as well as their dynamics, the consequence of the development of such methodology is the insight into required education and skills for a work place, as well as the insight into a regional component of job searching.   

Expected benefits of this project include the development of methodology for gathering information on job vacancies and the development of comprehensive index of job vacancies. The index would in the first place represent the improvement of the existing state statistics and it would provide the relevant and timely information on the state of job market, which isn't always the case with the existing statistics. The index would be calculated continuously and regularly and published publicly together with the comment on the current state of the job market.

Commissioned by: EIZ Club
Project duration: 2017 
Project leader: Marina Tkalec, PhD and Iva Tomić, PhD
Collaborator: Ivan Žilić