OVI for April 2021: Recovery continues, labor demand at 90 percent of the pre-pandemic April 2019

May 6, 2021

After last month's favorable movements, the labor market in April 2021 again shows continued recovery from the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. OVI index for April 2021 is several times higher compared to April 2020, but it should be kept in mind that in April 2020, due to the strict anti-pandemic measures, labor market was particularly inactive. Comparison between April 2021 and April 2019 shows that labor demand is at around 90 percent of the pre-pandemic level.
 
When observing different regions and comparing April 2021 and the pre-pandemic April 2019, there are differences in labor demand recovery. As expected, the Adriatic counties recovered the least. South Adriatic counties recorded almost 25 percent lower labor demand, while Northern Adriatic counties recorded almost 18 percent lower demand compared to April 2019. Central Croatia, in the same period, recorded a 10 percent drop, while in Eastern Croatian counties labor demand in April 2021 rose by as much as 20 percent compared to April 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.