OVI for August 2023: Job advertisements for teachers on the rise

September 4, 2023

After the OVI index decreased mildly in July by -1 percent, in August, the index rose on an annual level by 2.3 percent. From month to month, the seasonally adjusted index value decreased on a monthly level in May, June, and July (cumulatively by -11.9 percent), but in August it rose by 2.4 percent compared to July. A drop is usually recorded in the third quarter compared to the second quarter due to the summer months and seasonally impacted decrease in job advertisements. This is also expected for the third quarter of 2023, which, based on the months of July and August, could end at around -6 percent, a somewhat larger decrease than in the same period last year. Also, a slowdown is visible in the original data, according to which the annual growth rate in the third quarter could be the lowest since the beginning of 2021, but we should wait for the data for September for a definite conclusion.

The five most sought-after occupations have remained the same compared to August 2022 (salesperson, waiter, warehouse worker, driver, and cook), but the demand for cooks has fallen from the third place to the fifth. The largest drop among the most-sought after occupations was recorded for programmers, who fell from the 10th to the 26th place, while demand grew the most for teachers, who rose from the 13th place in August 2022 to the 6th most sought-after occupation in August 2023. The biggest contribution to the job advertisement growth rate came from advertisements for teachers, drivers, and warehouse workers, while the largest negative contribution came from advertisements for programmers, designers, and IT workers.

The share of job advertisements seeking lower levels of education remained unchanged over the year, at 16.6 percent, while the share of advertisements requiring secondary level education increased mildly, and those requiring higher levels decreased mildly. The northern Adriatic was the only region with a decrease in the number of job advertisements in August on an annual level, by -3 percent, while eastern Croatia had the highest growth rate, as much as 23.4 percent. Still, central Croatia had the highest positive contribution to the growth rate of 2.5 percentage points, owing to the large number of job advertisements, primarily reflecting a growth in demand for teachers, drivers, production workers, and construction 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 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.