OVI index
OVI for February 2025: Labor demand to drop in the first quarter
March 11, 2025
After a decrease in January, the OVI index also decreased in February, by -4.6 percent, according to seasonally adjusted data, compared to the previous month, which cumulatively amounts to a decrease of -9.8 percent as of the beginning of the year since December 2024. On an annual level, however, the index dropped much more, by -10.9 percent, partially reflecting the fact that February 2024 had an extra day since it was a leap year. The last two-digit drop was recorded in February 2021, also after a leap year. The index dropped by -3.6 percent in the last 12 months, compared to the previous 12 months, and judging by the seasonally adjusted figures for the first two months of 2025, it will drop on a quarterly level in the first quarter of this year.
Salesperson, cook, and waiter are still the top three occupations in demand, while drivers are in fifth place, and bookkeepers have taken over fourth place this year instead of warehouse workers. All five occupations recorded a decrease in the number of job advertisements on an annual level and together contributed to the index dropping by -4.4 percentage points. The largest drop in the number of job advertisements in absolute terms on an annual level in February was recorded for salespersons and warehouse workers, while the highest increase was recorded for teachers and nurses. Compared to February 2024, the share of advertisements seeking high levels of education increased significantly (from 21.1 to 24.8 percent), while the share of advertisements seeking secondary-level education fell from 64.6 to 60.7 percent. As in the previous months, the share of advertisements offering permanent employment rose from 51.6 to 54.9 percent, while the share of advertisements offering fixed-term employment decreased over the year from 36.6 to 35.1 percent. With regard to the geographical distribution of jobs, the number of job advertisements decreased in all regions, but the most in central Croatia, by -8.8 percent. In that region, the number of job advertisements dropped the most for salespersons, warehouse workers, and repair workers, while the highest increase in the number of job advertisements was recorded for nurses, teachers, and employees in finance.
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.
Otvorena dozvola RH