OVI for July 2018: A considerable deceleration in labor demand – The Adriatic is registering a 32-percent decrease in demand for waiters

Although OVI registered a 10.8 percent growth in July 2018 when compared to the same month of the previous year, it has nonetheless been the smallest increase in the past three years indicating a considerable deceleration in labor demand. Seasonally adjusted figures lead to the same conclusion since the seasonally adjusted index fell by 11.8 percent in July, indicating thereby the biggest drop on a monthly basis in the last 16 months. The source of deceleration may be coming from the tourism sector considering the fact that, according to the available data, the tourist season fell short of expectations in July. And indeed, in July 2018―when compared to July 2017―the demand for traditionally most sought-after service occupations in Adriatic counties declined or is stagnating: demand for sales assistants remains almost identical, the demand for cooks decreased by 6.6 percent, while the demand for waiters decreased by as much as 32 percent. In contrast, Central Croatia, which includes the City of Zagreb and the Zagreb, Varaždin, Krapina-Zagorje, Međimurje, Sisak-Moslavina, and Karlovac counties, is registering a 13-percent increase in labor demand when compared to the same month of the past year, primarily for occupations of workers in manufacturing, information technology, hairdressers, and nurses.
 

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.