OVI for April 2024: Number of job advertisements increases only in the southern Adriatic
May 3, 2024
The OVI index recorded a drop on an annual level for the fourth month in a row, -5.4 percent compared to April last year, which is a slower decrease compared to the -8.4 percent recorded in March. Seasonally adjusted values indicate that, compared to the previous month, labor demand rose by 1.3 percent, but since the beginning of the year, the index has nevertheless decreased overall, by -2.7 percent. Considering that the second quarter has just started, we should at least wait for the data for May before we can comment on the labor market signals and their impact on the real GDP growth rate with greater certainty.
The five most sought-after occupations have remained the same compared to April 2023: salesperson has remained the most sought-after occupation, followed by waiter and cook, while driver and warehouse worker switched fourth and fifth places. The biggest positive contribution to the index growth rate in April came from advertisements for drivers, clerks, and cooks, while the biggest negative contribution came from advertisements for warehouse workers and jobs in finance. Among the most sought-after occupations, programmers fell by six places, from the 19th to the 25th place, as did jobs in finance, from the 15th to the 21st place. The largest increase among the most sought-after occupations was recorded by pharmacists and beauticians, who climbed the list by six places, from the 29th to the 23rd place and from the 26th to the 20th place, respectively.
Compared to April 2023, the share of advertisements requiring secondary level education increased (from 63.3 to 65.5 percent), while the shares of advertisements seeking lower or higher levels of education fell from 17.2 to 16.2 percent and from 19.5 to 18.3 percent, respectively. The biggest negative contribution to the index annual decline rate came from job advertisements requiring high levels of education, while the lowest negative contribution came from job advertisements requiring secondary level education. The share of job advertisements offering permanent employment continued its growth trend in April, mostly at the expense of fixed-term employment contracts, but also at the expense of seasonal employment, whose share amounted to 10.7 percent. The southern Adriatic is the only region with a positive contribution to the job advertisement growth rate in April, and it had an annual increase in the number of job advertisements of 3.0 percent. The occupations with the largest positive contribution to the index growth rate in that region were salesperson, hotel/hospitality staff, waiter, and cook. The share of job advertisements offering permanent employment rose for cooks and waiters, at the expense of fixed-term employment contracts. A similar dynamic was observed in job advertisements for hotel/hospitality staff, but the share of seasonal jobs also decreased in this category. The share of job advertisements offering fixed-term employment rose for salespersons, mostly at the expense of seasonal employment.
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.