OVI for May 2018: Preparations for the tourist season in full swing

In May 2018, OVI recorded a 40.8 percent growth rate compared to the same month last year, indicating continued strong growth in labor demand on an annual level. The seasonally adjusted index points to the same conclusion in the short term as well. Namely, compared to the end of last year, OVI was 30.3 percent higher in May, while compared to April of this year, the index increased by 2.8 percent in only a month. Considering that labor market indicators usually follow GDP movements with a time lag, it seems that OVI’s growth in May is the result of an accelerated GDP growth rate, which in the first quarter of 2018 amounted to 2.5 percent on an annual level.

Judging by the occupations in demand, preparations for the upcoming tourist season are in full swing, as most job advertisements in May were for sales assistants, waiters, cooks, drivers, accountants, warehouse workers and hotel/hospitality staff which accounted for 46,3 percent of all job advertisements. A third of the job openings in May required secondary level of education, while university degree level was only required in just above 6 percent of job advertisements. Seasonal employment is on the rise, as evidenced by the 60.4 percent growth rate of such contracts on an annual level. At the same time, the share of seasonal contracts in total number of job advertisements rose from 11.5 percent in May 2017 to 13.3 percent in May 2018. Nearly three-quarters of the seasonal jobs were typical tourism jobs: waiters, cooks, hospitality, cleaning and sales staff.

 

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.