Internet index of job vacancies


Commissioned by: EIZ Club
Project duration: October, 2016 – May, 2017
Project manager: Marina Tkalec, PhD and Iva Tomić, PhD
Collaborator: Ivan Žilić



The project was dedicated to the design of the internet index of job vacancies based on the number of new online employment ads published on moj-posao.net, posao.hr and on the employment exchange of the Croatian Employment Service.   

The number of job vacancies is the indicator of current and future work demand. In the literature, the existence of the connection between the change of number of job vacancies and growth of the employed is confirmed. Apart of being useful information for employers and employees because it reflects the current state on job market, the number of job vacancies is an important indicator of the current state of business cycle and as such it is extremely useful to the government and ministries in creating and implementing public policies, in economic modeling, employment forecasting and forcasting of the rate of economic growth. 

In Croatia, this type of index did not exist, nor was it possible to determine the total number of job vacancies in some other way. There was no timely and comprehensive information on the number of job vacancies, which meant we did not have insight into the real situation on the job market. Croatian Employment Service published the monthly statistics on new job vacancies, but since 2002 the employers have not been obligated to publish job ads on the Croatian Employment Service, so these statistics were incomplete. Since we used big data approach and real time information, this index represented a novelty in the country's statistics.   

The objective of this project was to develop the methodology for collecting information on job vacancies and create a database from which it would be possible to calculate the index of job vacancies regularly and continuously.   

Monitoring and downloading of job ads published on most visited websites for job searching was automatized. This procedure was periodic and automatized in order to monitor the details of job searching in a systematic manner. Besides the number of job vacancies, as well as their dynamics, the consequence of the development of such methodology was insight into required education and skills for a work place, as well as insight into the regional component of job searching.   

The benefits of this project included the development of methodology for gathering information on job vacancies and the development of a comprehensive index of job vacancies. The index in the first place represented an improvement of the existing state statistics and provided relevant and timely information on the state of job market, which was not always the case with the existing statistics. The index is calculated continuously and regularly and it is published publicly together with the comment on the current state of the job market.

 

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