OVI for January 2024: Labor demand decreases in January

February 2, 2024

According to seasonally adjusted data, the OVI index decreased in January by -2.4 percent compared to the previous month, which makes it the sixth month with a decrease in index value in the past year. On an annual level, the decrease is even more pronounced, amounting to -6.7 percent compared to January last year, which is the biggest drop in index value in the last three years. After OVI grew last year at a rate of 3.6 percent and its growth rate decreased from one quarter to the next, judging by seasonally adjusted data for January 2024, its growth on a quarterly level should slow down additionally in the first quarter of this year, although a more reliable assessment cannot be made before the data for February become available.

The most sought-after occupations in January were salesperson, cook, warehouse worker, bookkeeper, and waiter, same as a year ago, the only difference being that warehouse workers rose from fifth to third place. The highest positive contribution to the job advertisement growth rate came from advertisements for warehouse workers and mechanical engineers, while the biggest negative contribution came from advertisements for waiters and construction engineers. The largest drop among the most sought-after occupations over the year was recorded for programmers and telecommunications staff, who fell by seven places, while economists rose the most, also by seven places. Compared to January 2023, the share of job advertisements seeking workers with secondary level of education increased significantly (from 60.3 to 62.4 percent), while the share of advertisements requiring low levels of education fell from 15.5 to 12.9 percent, and those requiring high levels of education remained nearly unchanged. The growth trend for the share of job advertisements offering permanent employment continued in January (rising from 46.0 to 53.2 percent), while the share of advertisements offering fixed-term employment fell significantly over the year from 46.8 to 40.7 percent. The number of job advertisements rose in eastern Croatia and the southern Adriatic, while the northern Adriatic and central Croatia had a negative contribution of as much as -5.4 percentage points. Eastern Croatia recorded an annual growth rate of 26.7 percent, with the highest contribution coming from job advertisements for teachers, salespersons, and bookkeepers.

 

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.