OVI for 2021: Labor demand 5.5 percent higher than in 2019

January 3, 2022

The calendar year, despite pandemic challenges, ends with good news, because the latest OVI index values still paint a positive picture of the labor market. According to the OVI index for December 2021, labor demand was 75 percent higher than in December 2020 and 32 percent higher than in pre-pandemic December 2019. This is the eighth consecutive month in which labor demand is higher than in pre-pandemic months. Positive trends can also be observed on the quarterly level because OVI index in the fourth quarter of 2021 was as much as 60 percent higher than in the fourth quarter of 2020 and 20 percent higher than the fourth quarter of the pre-pandemic 2019. These positive movements can also be observed on an annual level, because labor demand in 2021 went above its pre-pandemic levels. In 2021, OVI index rose by 48 percent compared to 2020 and by 5.5 percent compared to 2019.  In 2021, the most sought-after occupations were salesperson, cook, waiter, warehouse worker and driver, while 46 percent of advertisements were for fixed-term employment and 44 percent for permanent employment. Moreover, in 2021, 1.6 percent of advertisements mentioned the option of working from home, which is a significant increase compared to pre-pandemic 2019 when only 0.1 percent of advertisements mentioned this option. In the end, in 2021, there were 2.6 percent of job advertisements looking for pensioners, which is an increase of 1.2 percent compared to 2020 and of 0.6 percent compared to 2019.
 

 

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.