OVI index
OVI for August 2025: Seasonal drop in demand
September 2, 2025
After a recovery in labor demand in July, the OVI index recorded a drop of as much as -14.2 percent on an annual level in August. Seasonally adjusted data also confirm the drop in the index value compared to the previous month, by -10.6 percent, which is a significant departure from June and July when the index grew on a monthly level. Cumulatively, the decline since the end of last year amounts to -13.5 percent, with the third quarter currently in the red by -6.4 percent. Whether the third quarter will record an overall increase or decrease in activity will depend on the number of job advertisements in September.
The five most sought-after occupations have remained the same in the last year, but the positions have changed. Salespersons remained in first place, drivers jumped from fifth to third place, while warehouse workers climbed from third to second place. At the same time, waiters fell from second to fourth place, and cooks fell from fourth to fifth place. The biggest positive contribution to the index growth rate in August came from job advertisements for employees in finance and mechanical engineers, while the biggest negative contribution came from advertisements for teachers, salespersons, and waiters. Teachers had the biggest decline among the most sought-after occupations in August, falling by as many as 20 places. This drop can be explained by the seasonal character of the labor market: demand for teachers grew significantly in July due to the upcoming start of the school year, while in August, after this period of recruitment ended, there was a natural drop in demand. The largest increase among the most sought-after occupations was recorded by mechanical engineers, who climbed the list by eight places, from 22nd to 14th place.
Despite several months of a decline trend, the share of job advertisements requiring secondary level education increased in August, by 3.3 percentage points, while the shares of advertisements requiring low or high levels of education decreased by -0.6 and -2.7 percentage points, respectively. All levels of education had a negative contribution to the total number of job advertisements in August. The trend of a decreased share of fixed-term employment advertisements and an increased share of permanent employment advertisements is still pronounced. In August, 57.1 percent of job advertisements offered permanent employment, while 36.5 percent offered fixed-term employment.
All regions recorded a decrease in the number of job advertisements in August, with eastern Croatia at the lead with a drop of as much as -37.9 percent, followed by the northern Adriatic with -28.6 percent, the southern Adriatic with -19.5 percent, and central Croatia with -7.0 percent. The occupations with the largest negative contribution to the index decline rate in central Croatia were teachers, clerks, and nurses, while the biggest positive contribution came from advertisements for employees in finance, warehouse workers, and construction 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