OVI for 2023: 3.6 percent growth in number of job advertisements on an annual level

January 8, 2024

Compared to 2022, OVI recorded a slightly more modest growth than in previous years, rising by 3.6 percent, which points to a further growth in labor demand, but at a somewhat slower pace. This was at least partially also caused by base effects, namely, the highest ever recorded number of job advertisements. Compared to precrisis 2019, the total number of online job advertisements in 2023 was 37 percent higher, indicating that demand on the Croatian labor market is at its historically highest levels.

Nearly the entire contribution to the annual growth in demand came from job advertisements seeking workers with secondary level of education, while demand for workers with high and low levels of education contributed with only half a percentage point. Thus, the share of job advertisements seeking secondary level of education rose by 1.2 percentage points to 61.9 percent, while the shares of job advertisements requiring high and low levels of education fell in 2023. This is backed by information on the five most sought-after occupations, which included the occupations of salesperson, waiter, cook, warehouse worker, and driver, the latter of which climbed, compared to 2022, from the sixth to the fifth place, replacing the occupation of bookkeeper. The biggest contribution to the total annual increase in labor demand was made by advertisements seeking salespersons, warehouse workers, and drivers, while the largest negative contributions came from advertisements for programmers, IT workers, designers, and cooks. The largest drop among the most sought-after occupations was recorded for programmers, who fell from the 12th to the 23rd place, while telecommunications staff and teachers ranked four places higher (telecommunications staff climbed from the 23rd to the 19th place, and teachers from the 14th to the 10th place).

In 2023, there was a significant increase in the number and share of contracts offering permanent employment, mainly at the expense of contracts for fixed-term and seasonal employment. The share of contracts offering permanent employment thus reached 48.2 percent, 4.5 percentage points higher than the previous year.

All Croatian regions recorded an increase in the number of job advertisements on an annual level, with central Croatia at the lead, contributing with 2.4 percentage points and a 58 percent share in the total number of job advertisements. It was followed by the northern Adriatic, with 1 percentage point, eastern Croatia with 0.7, and the southern Adriatic with 0.4 percentage points. Only advertisements from abroad dropped, affected by a downward economic cycle in certain eurozone countries and contributing negatively to the total growth in the number of job advertisements with -0.6 percentage points.

 

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 2020). 

The index is to be interpreted in such a way that the values greater than 100 represent growth when compared to 2020, and accordingly, that the values less than 100 represent a decrease with respect to the base year. The index is seasonally adjusted using the X-12-ARIMA method.