OVI index
OVI for 2024: Number of job advertisements drops by -3.2 percent on an annual level
January 3, 2025
After the pandemic year of 2020, 2024 was the first year to record a drop in the OVI index, by -3.2 percent, after a 3.6 percent slowdown in 2023. The total number of job advertisements in 2024 was the second largest since 2005, when we started following the index, but it was lower compared to the record set in 2023. However, the biggest drop in the index is behind us, because it was recorded in the first eight months of the year, while the last quarter saw a 1.4 percent growth compared to the previous quarter. Judging by the monthly and seasonally adjusted figures, in 2024 the OVI index stabilized, and considering the expected macroeconomic developments, a significant drop in labor demand is not expected in 2025.
The biggest contribution to the annual drop in demand came from job advertisements seeking workers with low levels of education (-1.1 percentage point), followed by those seeking secondary level of education (-0.7 percentage points), while the lowest negative contribution came from job advertisements requiring higher levels of education (-0.2 percentage points). Thus, the share of job advertisements seeking lower levels of education decreased by 1 percentage point to 14.5 percent, while the shares of job advertisements seeking secondary and higher levels of education increased in 2024 by 0.7 and 0.3 percentage points, respectively.
The list of the five most sought-after occupations hardly changed over the year. The highest in demand was the occupation of salesperson. Cooks took over second place from waiters in 2024, pushing waiters to third, while warehouse workers and drivers remained in fourth and fifth place, respectively. The biggest contribution to the total annual increase in labor demand came from job advertisements seeking bookkeepers, professors, and employees in finances, while the largest negative contributions came from job advertisements seeking construction workers, waiters, programmers, production workers, telecommunications staff, and teachers. The largest drop among the most sought-after occupations was recorded for bricklayers, who fell from 25th to 30th place, while pharmacists, construction engineers, and nurses ranked four places higher (pharmacists climbed from 28th to 24th place, construction engineers from 14th to 10th, and nurses from 22nd to 18th place).
In 2024, the number and share of contracts offering permanent employment continued to increase, mainly at the expense of contracts for fixed-term and seasonal employment. The share of contracts offering permanent employment thus reached 53 percent, 4.8 percentage points higher than the previous year.
All regions except the southern Adriatic recorded a decrease in the number of job advertisements on an annual level, with central Croatia recording the biggest drop, contributing with -1.4 percentage points and a 58 percent share in the total number of job advertisements. It was followed by the northern Adriatic, with -1.2 percentage points, and eastern Croatia, with -0.4 percentage points. Advertisements from abroad also dropped on an annual level, by 29 percent, with a negative contribution of -0.7 percentage points. Only advertisements from the southern Adriatic rose (in Zadar, Šibenik-Knin, Split-Dalmatia, and Dubrovnik-Neretva counties), with an annual growth of 6.5 percent, contributing positively to the total growth in the number of job advertisements with 0.9 percentage points. The most sought-after occupations in this region were salesperson, hotel/hospitality staff, construction engineer, cook, and professor, while the biggest drop in demand was recorded for warehouse workers, waiters, and bricklayers.
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.
Otvorena dozvola RH