OVI for July 2023: -4.1 percent decrease in job advertisements in central Croatia

August 16, 2023

In July, the OVI index decreased by -1 percent on an annual level, after a mild decrease in May and a moderate recovery in June. Judging by seasonally adjusted data and index movements compared to preceding months, a drop has been recorded in three consecutive months: the decrease amounted to -3 percent in May, -6.2 percent in June, and an additional -3.2 percent in July. The second quarter thus recorded a drop of -2 percent compared to the first quarter, and the beginning of the third quarter also started with a decrease. However, we believe this is still a case of seasonal hiring being pushed towards the beginning of the year instead of during the tourist preseason as in earlier years, and does not mean that labor market trends are slowing down. This is supported by the 4.1 percent growth rate in number of job advertisements in the first seven months of 2023 compared to the first seven months of last year, and by the 5.6 percent growth rate compared to the previous seven months.

The most sought-after occupations have remained the same compared to July 2022 (salesperson, warehouse worker, driver, waiter, cook, and bookkeeper) and together have generated a 1.7 percent growth in number of job advertisements on an annual level. The largest drop in demand was recorded for programmers, who fell from the 13th most sought-after occupation to the 24th, while demand grew the most for medical doctors, who advanced from 25th place in July 2022 to the 12th most sought-after occupation in July 2023. The largest drop in the number of job advertisements in absolute terms on an annual level in June was recorded for programmers, teachers, and hotel/hospitality staff, while the highest increase was recorded for medical doctors, bookkeepers, warehouse workers, and drivers. The share of advertisements requiring secondary level education is still on the rise (amounting to 62 percent in July), as is the number of job advertisements offering permanent employment (rising from 44.1 percent to 47.4 percent). In July, the number of job advertisements dropped only in central Croatia, by -4,1 percent on an annual level, while the most considerable growth was recorded in eastern Croatia (by 23.9 percent) and the northern Adriatic (by 19.5 percent). Central Croatia and the northern Adriatic contributed to the growth in total number of job advertisements with -2.4 percentage points and 2.4 percentage points, respectively, cancelling out their contributions. The drop in July is just the second recorded annual decrease in number of job advertisements in central Croatia since February 2021 (the other one was recorded in December 2022). The occupations that contributed the most to the drop in number of job advertisements in central Croatia were programmer, teacher, and occupations in finances and information technology.

 

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.