OVI for September 2023: Labor demand still strong in the third quarter

October 2, 2023

In September, the OVI index rose by 7.2 percent on an annual level, which is the highest index growth rate since March 2023. The seasonally adjusted index value also recorded a growth for the second month in a row, by 2.8 percent in August compared to July, and an additional 4.6 percent in September compared to August. The third quarter thus recorded an increase of 3.2 percent compared to the same period last year, but compared to the second quarter, the seasonally adjusted value recorded a decrease of -4.1 percent, which was nevertheless somewhat more moderate compared to the year 2022 (-5.0 percent). If a similar trend continues up to the end of the year, labor demand can be expected to have a positive growth rate again this year, but at a significantly lower value compared to the previous year.

Compared to September 2022, the occupations of salesperson, teacher, waiter, and warehouse worker remained among the five most sought-after occupations, but cooks took over the fifth place from bookkeepers. The largest drop among the most-sought after occupations was again recorded for programmers, who fell from the 15th to the 23rd place, while demand grew the most for mechanical engineers, who rose from the 24th place in September 2022 to the 16th most sought-after occupation in September 2023. The biggest contribution to the job advertisement growth rate came from advertisements for teachers, warehouse workers, and waiters, while the largest negative contribution came from advertisements for bookkeepers, programmers, and IT workers.

The share of job advertisements seeking secondary level of education remained nearly unchanged over the year and amounted to 60.1 percent, but the share of advertisements seeking lower levels of education increased to 15.4 percent, while those requiring higher levels decreased to 24.6 percent. All four regions recorded an increase in the number of job advertisements in September on an annual level, by 15.2 percent in the northern Adriatic, 6.6 percent in central Croatia, 4.3 percent in the southern Adriatic, while eastern Croatia had the lowest growth rate at 2.7 percent. The top five occupations in all four regions included the occupations of salesperson, teacher, and waiter, while warehouse workers did not make the top five only in eastern Croatia. In the northern and southern Adriatic demand was also high for cooks. Clerks were on the top five list in central Croatia, while drivers and construction workers were among the top five occupations in eastern Croatia.

 

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.