OVI for April 2019: Employers offer more permanent-contract jobs

After a somewhat stronger index growth in February and March 2019, in April OVI recorded a more modest growth of just 1.8 percent compared to the same month in 2018. Nevertheless, it still suggests a continued growth in labor demand on an annual level. Seasonally adjusted values are also positive and show that the number of advertisements in April rose by 0.3 percent compared to the previous month. Considering that the CEIZ index is suggesting the real GDP annual growth rate could accelerate to 2.8 percent in the first quarter, we can confirm that for now the labor market is following the business cycle.

In terms of occupations, the highest increase in number of advertisements on an annual level was recorded for sales assistants, warehouse workers, and cleaners, while the largest decrease was recorded for cooks, construction workers, and teachers. Compared to April 2018, the share of advertisements requiring secondary level of education rose mildly, decreasing the share of listings requiring lower qualifications. At the same time, the share of openings for permanent positions also rose, at the expense of fixed-term job postings. With regard to location, most of the advertisements were for jobs in central Croatia, which in April had the highest positive contribution to the total growth in number of job advertisements on an annual level (3.9 percentage points). Although there are not many advertisements for jobs abroad, they have been recording strong growth rates month after month, and in April their annual growth rate was as high as 23.4 percent. The occupations in highest demand for jobs abroad were cooks, production workers, drivers, electrical technicians, and car repair workers.

 

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.