OVI for July 2019: Mild recovery of labor demand

August 13, 2019

After labor demand weakened in May and June, OVI index in July points to a recovery, since the index rose by 1.9 percent compared to July 2018. Seasonally adjusted index values confirm this, suggesting there has also been a mild growth of 0.4 percent on a monthly level. However, due to a somewhat stronger fall during previous two months, average index value in this year's first seven months is 0.5 percent lower compared to the same period last year. Lower labor demand in the first seven months of 2019, compared to 2018, could also be reflecting somewhat weaker tourism indicators this year, since the majority of on-line job advertisements are for occupations belonging to the tourism sector. 
 
As in July 2018, the most sought-after occupations in July this year were sales assistant, waiter, cook, driver and warehouse worker, amounting to more than 35 percent of all published job advertisements. The most positive contribution to the growth of the number of job advertisements on an annual level came from advertisements for sales assistants and waiters, while the most negative contribution came from advertisements for occupations in information technology. Only little less than two percent of advertisements stated that employing foreigners was desirable, mostly for the occupations of programmers and information technology specialists. Interestingly, in advertisements published in July, there was a lower demand for all education levels, compared to the previous year, except for lower qualified and qualified workers for whom the demand rose on an annual level. Labor demand in central Croatia (accounting for 60 percent of all published advertisements) slightly dropped in July, while labor demand in other regions rose compared to July 2018.
 

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.