OVI index
OVI for November 2024: Labor demand grows by 2.8 percent compared to October
December 12, 2024
According to seasonally adjusted data, the OVI index grew in November by 2.8 percent compared to the previous month, which is the largest growth on a monthly level since February of this year. On an annual level, it also grew, by 0.9 percent compared to November last year, which is the first positive growth rate since July of this year and represents a reversal compared to October when the index fell by as much as -7.2 percent. Even if the growth continues in December, we expect a drop in the annual index value in the fourth quarter. In the first 11 months of this year, the index fell by -3.4 percent in total compared to the previous period last year. Everything indicates that 2024 will be recorded as a year of a mild drop in labor demand, although a significantly more moderate one compared to the last annual drop in 2020.
Compared to November 2023, the occupations of salesperson, warehouse worker, and bookkeeper remained among the three most sought-after occupations, while drivers pushed waiters from fourth to fifth place. The largest drop among the most sought-after occupations in November was recorded for electrical technicians, who fell from 16th to 25th place, while demand grew the most for pharmacists, who rose from 30th place in November 2023 to the 22nd most sought-after occupation in November 2024. The biggest contribution to the job advertisement growth rate came from advertisements for pharmacists and clerks, while the largest negative contribution came from advertisements for salespersons, electrical technicians, programmers, and production workers (a total of -2.3 percentage points).
The share of job advertisements requiring higher levels of education rose over the year, from 23.6 to 26.8 percent, mainly at the expense of job advertisements requiring secondary level of education, whose share fell by -2.4 percentage points to 59.9 percent. A growth trend can still be observed for job advertisements offering permanent employment, with their share in November amounting to 61.2 percent, 7.9 percentage points higher compared to November last year. This month only the southern Adriatic region recorded a drop in the number of job advertisements and an annual decrease of -0.8 percent, while the other regions recorded an increase in the number of job advertisements, by 0.8 percent in central Croatia, 4.0 percent in the northern Adriatic, and 4.2 percent in eastern Croatia. The number of job advertisements from abroad is still dropping strongly. Although the growth rate in central Croatia was low, considering that this region accounts for 63 percent of job advertisements, the positive contribution to the total index was 0.5 percentage points. The biggest contribution to the growth in number of job advertisements in central Croatia came from advertisements for clerks, medical doctors/dentists, and construction workers, while the largest negative contribution came from job advertisements for warehouse workers, production workers, and IT workers.
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