OVI for November 2020: Labor demand at 70 percent of the pre-pandemic demand

December 7, 2020

OVI index for November 2020 shows that labor demand was 30 percent lower than in the same month last year. This is the biggest drop in labor demand since May this year, probably as a consequence of the announcement and introduction of strict economic restrictions aimed at curbing the pandemic. This decrease additionally repressed the level of labor demand which has been varying, in the past five months, at around 75 to 80 percent of the pre-pandemic level.
 
When observing labor demand at the level of occupations, a relatively strong demand for occupations related to the construction sector is recorded, as a consequence of the Zagreb earthquake. Demand for brick layers, compared to November 2019, rose by 77 percent, while demand for construction engineers rose by 59 percent. A decrease in labor demand is visible in hospitality services, as expected, so that demand for waiters and cooks dropped by 67 and 55 percent respectively.
 
 

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.