OVI for June 2024: Demand for workers increases by 0.4 percent in June

July 2, 2024

After five consecutive months of an annual decline rate of the index, in June OVI rose by 0.4 percent on an annual level. Seasonally adjusted data also confirm the mild growth trend on a monthly level, which has been observed since April, and which amounted to 0.4 percent in June compared to the previous month. Quarterly and half-yearly data, however, point to a further decrease of the index, by -1.6 percent in the first half of the year compared to the last six months of the previous year. The quarterly data are somewhat more favorable than the half-yearly figures, as labor demand undoubtedly strengthened in the months preceding the tourist season, and the decline amounted to -2.4 percent in the second quarter on an annual level, and only a mild -0.1 percent compared to the first quarter of this year.

The most sought-after occupations have remained the same compared to June 2023 (salesperson, waiter, cook, warehouse worker, and driver) and together generated a 1.1 percent growth in the number of job advertisements on an annual level. The largest absolute decrease in the number of job advertisements on an annual level in June was recorded for programmers, production workers, and brick layers, while the highest increase was recorded for salespersons, nurses, and medical doctors/dentists. The biggest jump on the list of the most sought-after occupations was recorded for nurses, climbing from 23rd place in June last year to 14th place in June this year. On the other hand, programmers and electrical technicians fell by as much as six places on the list. The share of job advertisements requiring secondary level education, which had been growing in the last few months, seems to have stabilized in June at 65.4 percent, while the share of job advertisements seeking higher levels of education rose mildly at the expense of job advertisements seeking lower levels of education. The share of job advertisements offering permanent employment grew more significantly over the year, from 46.8 percent to 50.9 percent, mostly at the expense of fixed-term employment contracts, whose share fell to 38.7 percent in June. With regard to geographical distribution of jobs, the Dalmatian counties had the biggest positive contribution to the index growth rate, by as much as 2.7 percentage points. The job advertisements that contributed the most to the high annual growth rate of 19.1 percent were those for salespersons, cooks, nurses, warehouse workers, and repair workers. Central Croatia contributed 0.4 percentage points to the growth in the total number of job advertisements, while the northern Adriatic and eastern Croatia recorded a drop in the number of job advertisements.

 

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.