OVI for July 2020: Labor demand is recovering, but it is 18 percent lower than in July of last year

OVI in July shows that labor demand has continued to gradually recover from the break in economic activities caused by the coronavirus pandemic. In July 2020, labor demand was 18 percent lower than in July 2019. Although this is a drop, the fall in July is relatively low compared to the drop in June, May, and particularly April. For the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic, demand for one of the traditionally most sought-after occupations – cooks – has grown, by 21.5 percent compared to July 2019. Demand for the other two occupations that are highest in demand – sales persons and waiters – fell in July compared to the same month last year, by 34.4 and 18.8 percent, respectively. Also, for the first time since the outbreak, occupations that are not linked to the pandemic and the earthquake in Zagreb have recorded an increase in demand. More precisely, in July 2020 demand rose for IT technicians, electrical engineers, beauticians, and telecommunications staff compared to July 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.