OVI for May 2021: Recovery of labor demand, more workers in demand than in the pre-pandemic May 2019

June 1, 2021

Labor market, observed from the perspective of OVI index movement, has been showing clear signs of recovery from the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic for the third month in a row. OVI index for May 2021 is several times higher compared to May 2020, but it should be kept in mind that in May 2020, due to the strict anti-pandemic measures, labor market was particularly inactive. However, comparison of OVI index from May 2021 and OVI index from May 2019 shows that labor demand is around 1 percent higher compared to the pre-pandemic level. This is the first recorded labor demand increase, compared to the pre-pandemic level, since the beginning of the pandemic.
 
The most sought-after occupations in May 2021 were salesperson, cook and waiter, accounting for around 28 percent in the overall labor demand. Demand for cooks and waiters significantly recovered, which is partially the result of relatively late preparations for the tourist season. When observing the type of contracts in job advertisements, in May 2021 compared to the pre-pandemic May 2019, labor demand related to student and seasonal jobs increased the most, by around 16 percent, while labor demand related to permanent employment contracts rose by 8 percent. Labor demand related to fixed-term employment contracts dropped by 5 percent.


 

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.