OVI index
OVI for May 2025: Less pressure on demand for seasonal workers
June 4, 2025
The OVI index continued to drop for the fifth month in a row, and at an even higher intensity, as the annual decline rate amounted to -13.4 percent in May compared to -6.3 percent recorded in the previous month. In the last 12 months, the average index value was lower by -4.6 percent compared to the previous comparable period, which represents a faster decline compared to the first four months of this year. Cumulatively, the decline since the end of last year amounts to -14.4 percent, and when observed by quarters, the second quarter is lower by -8.4 percent compared to the first quarter, because the seasonally adjusted values in April and May were negative. Short-term signals from the labor market are therefore unfavorable and point to a drop in activity in the second quarter, even though data for the current month are not available yet.
The five most sought-after occupations have remained the same compared to May 2024; salesperson has remained the most sought-after occupation, followed by waiter and cook, which switched places, while driver and warehouse worker took the fourth and fifth place. The biggest positive contribution to the index growth rate in May came from job advertisements for employees in finance, nurses, and pharmacists, while the biggest negative contribution came from advertisements for salespersons, cooks, and warehouse workers, whose demand together fell by -16.3 percent over the year. Beauticians had the biggest decline among the most sought-after occupations, falling by nine places, from the 21st to the 30th place. The largest increase among the most sought-after occupations was recorded by bricklayers, who climbed the list by seven places, from the 28th to the 21st place.
As in previous months, the share of job advertisements requiring secondary level education decreased and amounted to 63.4 percent in May, while the share of advertisements requiring high levels of education rose by 1.1 percentage points. At the same time, the biggest negative contribution to the total number of job advertisements came from job advertisements requiring secondary level education, with as much as -7.6 percentage points. The share of job advertisements offering permanent employment continued its growth trend at the expense of seasonal employment and fixed-term employment contracts. All regions recorded a decrease in the number of job advertisements, with the biggest decrease in the southern Adriatic (-24.3 percent) and the smallest decrease in the northern Adriatic (-6.4 percent). The occupations with the largest negative contribution to the index decline rate in the southern Adriatic region were salesperson, cook, teacher, cleaner, and beautician. Of these, the advertisements for cleaners, cooks, and salespersons had the largest drop in fixed-term employment contracts and seasonal employment, which supports the opinion that we have been seeing a drop in new job adverts due to permanent employment and a reduced need to seek workers at the beginning of each tourist season.
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