OVI for 2017: Substantial labor market recovery

Labor demand a third higher than in 2016, exceeding pre-crisis levels  

In 2017 OVI rose by 33 percent compared to 2016, indicating a strong recovery of labor demand. Compared to the pre-crisis year of 2007, the total number of online job advertisements in 2017 was 14 percent higher, suggesting that demand in the Croatian labor market is even higher than in the best pre-crisis years.   

Although most online job advertisements in 2017 represented fixed-term employment (45 percent of all advertisements), the number of fixed-term job advertisements grew at a somewhat slower pace than job advertisements for permanent employment, which grew from 39 percent of total job advertisements in 2016 to 42 percent in 2017. In addition, last year saw a noticeable drop in the number of job advertisements offering occupational training, which fell from 6 percent of total job advertisements in 2016 to 4 percent in 2017. This points to a stable growth of the Croatian economy and favorable outlook for the business sector in the upcoming period, considering that employers are more willing to employ workers permanently, which was not the case during the crisis.   

Job advertisements in 2017, as in 2016, were predominantly posted for the occupations of sales assistant, waiter, cook, driver and programmer. Among these, demand for programmers grew at the lowest rate (18 percent), causing job advertisements for programmers to fall in demand from fourth place in 2016 to fifth place in 2017. In addition to the constant growth in demand for employees with secondary level of education, in 2017 there was a noticeable increase in demand for low-skilled and semi-skilled employees, by 56 and 130 percent respectively, while demand for university degree level rose by less than 4 percent compared to 2016. There is obviously a growing demand for lower qualified workers, as evidenced both by the most sought-after occupations and required levels of education.

 

What is OVI?

Online Vacancy Index (OVI) is a monthly index of online job advertisements developed by the Institute of Economics, Zagreb in cooperation with the web portal MojPosao. The index aims to provide timely information regarding current labor demands. OVI index is developed by means of simple enumeration of single new job advertisements whose application deadlines end within the same month for which the index is being calculated. Given that advertisements published by only one web portal are taken into account, the number of job advertisements is expressed as an index (with the base year being 2015). 

The index is to be interpreted in such a way that the values greater than 100 represent growth when compared to 2015, and accordingly, that the values less than 100 represent a decrease with respect to the base year. Index is seasonally adjusted using the X-12-ARIMA method.