OVI for July 2021: Positive movements continue, demand higher than in 2019 for three months in a row

August 9, 2021

Positive development of events on the labor market continues. For the last couple of months, OVI index has shown that labor demand is above the pre-pandemic level and the same holds true for OVI index in July. When comparing July 2021 to July 2019, labor demand is 29 percent higher. This is the third month in a row in which labor demand is higher than in the pre-pandemic months. These favorable movements are the reflection of a successful tourist season thus far, and of later hiring of seasonal workers. When observing regional movements on the labor market, the highest recovery has been recorded in the Adriatic region, as expected, while the lowest recovery has been observed at the east of Croatia. Moreover, demand for waiters, cooks and hotel staff has significantly risen in July 2021 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.