OVI for August 2020: Labor demand is lower than last year, but there is increased demand for construction workers

September 7, 2020

OVI in August shows that labor demand has continued to gradually recover. In August 2020, labor demand was 25 percent lower than in August 2019. Although this is a drop, the fall in August is relatively low compared to the drop in the second quarter, when the break in economic activities caused by the pandemic was most pronounced.
 
A large part of this partial recovery can be attributed to demand for occupations linked to the construction sector, probably as a result of reconstruction efforts after the Zagreb earthquake. Demand for construction workers and bricklayers rose by 56 percent compared to the same month last year, while demand for civil engineers grew by 20 percent. Besides these occupations, there is also an increased demand for carpenters, machinists, electrical technicians, and mechanical engineers. On a regional basis, the largest drop in labor demand compared to August 2019 was recorded in Adriatic counties – by approximately 30 percent – while eastern and central Croatia registered a 12 percent and 27 percent drop, respectively.

 
 

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.