OVI for August 2019: Fall in job advertisements in Central Croatia

September 4, 2019

According to seasonally adjusted data, OVI index in the summer months, July and August, recorded a somewhat modest increase on a monthly level, cumulatively only 0.6 percent compared to the second quarter. After the index, in the first quarter of 2019, cumulatively rose by 10.9 percent compared to the end of 2018, a fall of -9.9 percent has been recorded in the second quarter compared to the previous quarter. Concerning the most recent data for August, the index dropped by -5.1 percent on an annual level. These indicators point to a modest decrease in labor demand that began back in May 2019.

The biggest increase in job advertisements on an annual level in August was recorded for professions of teachers, cooks and sales assistants, while the biggest decrease was recorded for production workers, warehouse workers and drivers. Compared to August 2018, there has been a significant decrease in the number of job advertisements requiring secondary level of education, while the share of advertisements offering permanent employment simultaneously rose. When it comes to geographical distribution of jobs, the biggest number of advertisements was for jobs in central Croatia which had, in August, a large negative share in the overall drop of the number of advertisements on an annual level, since the number of job advertisements in this region was 8.3 percent lower compared to August 2018. Although the majority of advertisements published in August did not require work experience, those advertisements that did require it usually asked for no more than 5 years of work experience. A similar situation can be seen in advertisements in which employers also stated pensioners as potential employees. A very small number of such advertisements has been recorded, only 1.2 percent of the overall number of advertisements, while the highest demand in these advertisements was for drivers, followed by construction workers, cooks and bricklayers.
 

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.