OVI for June 2021: Labor demand continues, more workers in demand than before the pandemic

July 14, 2021

Labor market recovery, which has been recorded in the past few months, has continued. OVI index for June 2021 is several times higher compared to June 2020, but it should be kept in mind that in June 2020, due to the anti-pandemic measures, labor market was inactive. However, comparison of OVI index from June 2021 and OVI index from June 2019 shows that labor demand is almost 28 percent higher compared to the pre-pandemic level, probably due to later hiring of seasonal workers this year. This is the second consecutive recorded labor demand increase, compared to the pre-pandemic level. On the quarterly level, the numbers are also looking better. In the second quarter of 2021, the number of job advertisements was 5 percent higher than in the second quarter of 2019. However, when considering the first six months, labor demand has still not returned to the pre-pandemic level – it is some 6 percent lower compared to labor demand in the first six months of 2019.

 

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.