July the 12th, 2023 – Croatian employment searches are remaining at record levels, with only two sectors experiencing a decrease.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, more than 50,000 job vacancies have recently been published on MojPosao/MyJob platform. In the first six months of 2023, the MojPosao website and the PosLovac mobile app published more than 50,000 job vacancies, which represents an 8% increase compared to last year.
70,000 job candidates applied
The aforementioned ads received more than 700,000 applications from job candidates, which is at the level of last year. This continued the positive trend of record numbers of Croatian employment searches that began back during the second half of 2021.
A drop in demand for IT specialists
By analysing the entire domestic labour market, we’ve come to find that despite the growth in the total number of published job advertisements and Croatian job searches in certain industries and occupational categories, there has been a decline in the demand for labour compared to last year.
First of all, this refers to the IT and telecommunications sector, where thirty percent fewer advertisements were published than in the same period last year, which is in line with the global decline in demand for specialists of this profile. There’s also been a noticeable drop in demand for workers in the field of tourism, more specifically in the categories of construction, geodesy and geology. On the other hand, there’s been an increase in the demand for labour in the sales sector, as well as in the installation, maintenance and repair sectors.
The global IT industry has been in choppy waters
“The significant crisis shaking the entire global IT industry, which resulted in mass layoffs in companies like Facebook and LinkedIn, caused the consolidation of the IT labour market all over the world, including here in Croatia. The decline in demand for workers in tourism is also noticeable, but we believe that employers have managed to cope with this. For example, by finding candidates through our online job fair in tourism and seasonal workers via Sezonac.hr, as well as by employing a large number of foreign workers through agencies.
It’s interesting to note the drop in the number of ads for jobs in construction, where investments fell, the number of sales transactions decreased, but real estate prices continued to rise in the first half of 2023,” pointed out Igor Žonja, the director of the MojPosao portal.
Sales, hospitality and tourism
The most sought-after occupations in the first half of 2023 continue to be found in the field of sales, tourism and hospitality. In addition, thanks to the significant growth in the demand for labour in the sales sector (+10% compared to the last quarter), almost a fifth (19%) of all job vacancies were published in that category in the first half of the year. On the other hand, the number of vacancies published in the tourism and hospitality category was slightly lower compared to the same period last year (-8%).
The largest offer was recorded in the following occupational categories:
Sales (Trade) – 19% of ads
Tourism and hospitality – 16% of ads
Production and craft services – 11% of ads
Encouragingly, Three out of four advertisements are for permanent employment
Regarding the type of employment in question, in the first half of 2023, advertisements for permanent employment accounted for as much as 76% of the total number of advertisements, which is a slightly higher share than the previous year (+1%). There were 51% of advertisements for temporary work, which is 3% less than in 2022. Employees for seasonal work were wanted in 7% of the ads, while 3% of the ads related to student jobs.
At the very beginning of 2023, employers were most often looking for candidates with a secondary vocational education – in 54% of their advertisements, having proof of a secondary vocational education was a requirement for a successful application.
Every other ad is for employment in Zagreb
Every other job advertisement (50%) referred to Zagreb and Zagreb County, followed by the coastal counties: Split-Dalmatia County (14%), Primorje-Gorski Kotar County (14%) and Istria County (11%).
Tourism
In the first six months of this year, more than 6,000 ads were published in the tourism and hospitality category, and many Croatian employment searches were in these fields, which isn’t a surprise. The aforementioned figure represents a share of 16% in the total number of all published job vacancies, and it is the second most represented category on the MojPosao portal.
The most sought-after occupations in tourism this year (as was also the case back in previous years) were: waiters, cooks/chefs, receptionists, assistant cooks, kitchen assistants and those who can valet cars. It was the coastal counties that saw the biggest drop in the number of job vacancies in the tourism and hospitality category compared to last year, while the continental counties recorded an increase in the number of advertisements in this category.
