OVI for the third quarter of 2020: Labor demand decreases by 24 percent compared to last year

October 8, 2020

OVI index for the third quarter of 2020 shows that labor demand was at the level of 76 percent of the demand in the third quarter of 2019. Although this is a significant drop of 24 percent, compared to the drop in the second quarter of 2020, which amounted to 53.2 percent, we are witnessing a rather slight decrease. At the monthly level, labor demand in September 2020 was 27.8 percent lower compared to the same month last year, which is comparable to the decreases in August, July and June. These data indicate that, although labor demand is gradually recovering from the consequences of the pandemic, labor market has still not reached its full volume.
 
When looking at the most sought-after occupations in the third quarter of 2020, compared to the same period last year, it can be noticed that occupations related to the construction sector are more in demand, probably as a consequence of the earthquake in Zagreb. Demand for bricklayers rose by 68 percent, demand for construction workers by 24 percent, while demand for construction engineers rose by 13 percent. Besides these occupations, demand for teachers and nurses also rose on the quarterly level. On a regional basis, the biggest decrease in labor demand, compared to the third quarter of 2019, happened in the Adriatic counties, around 30 percent, followed by central Croatia, where a drop of 25 percent has been registered, while the slightest quarterly drop of 8 percent has been registered 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 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.