OVI for February 2021: Labor demand 18 percent lower than in February 2020

March 3, 2021

The labor market in February 2021 is still under the strong influence of the COVID-19 pandemic. OVI index for February 2021 indicates that labor demand was 18 percent lower than in February 2020, which is a milder drop compared to movements in the previous months. A dramatic decline in the service sector is being recorded for almost a year now, as well as an increase in the demand for occupations in the construction sector. The same trends were noticed in February this year, but there has also been an increase in the demand for occupations that are not related to the construction sector. For example, the demand for programmers has increased by 17 percent compared to February 2020. It is interesting to notice that the decline in the demand for occupations related to student and seasonal contracts (a drop of 70 percent) has contributed the most to the overall decline, while the demand for occupations related to short-term and permanent contracts dropped by less than 10 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.