As Ljubica Gataric/VL/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 18th of November, 2019, about 66,000 workers were hired to start new jobs in Croatia during September, including about 7,400 first-time job seekers. In the second quarter, 29,000 unemployed people found jobs in the Republic of Croatia, but alongside that, 15,000 workers went to sign on at the job centre during the same time period.
In line with the unfortunate seasonal nature of Croatia’s economy, the autumn and winter months bring much fewer jobs, as has been clearly evidenced by the number of job seekers officially registered.
The number of unemployed people is around 125,000, and they can choose from 11,000 job vacancies in total. As a rule, the big move towards ”signing on” at the job centre typically occurs in October, and this year around 83,000 employees remained without employment in September, and this of course sounds tragic, but like every year, it mostly regards those who were working seasonal jobs.
Eurostat has released the results of a new European labour market survey showing that between the first and second quarters of 2019, three million people (one fifth of all unemployed in the first quarter of 2019) found a job. However, during that same period, 8.3 million former employees ended up out of work and a further 3.3 million became otherwise economically inactive.
The survey does not contain data for Germany, but Croatia is included. According to this data, in the second quarter of 2019, 29,000 unemployed people found a job in Croatia, but in that same period, 15,000 workers registered as job seekers. Another 20,000 ex workers became economically inactive.
Compared to 2018 or 2017, the number of unemployed people finding a job in Croatia halved in the second quarter, traditionally the strongest quarter in terms of new employment due to the boom in agriculture, construction and tourism. In 2018, 63,000 unemployed people were employed in Croatia during this period, and about 56,000 were back in 2017.
As job offers aren’t declining, obviously working exhausting seasonal jobs is not a solution for the existing group of unemployed individuals, 47,000 of whom are registered as long-term unemployed. Compared to others, Croatia has a very low employment rate for young highly educated people. At the EU level, 82 out of 100 graduates are employed. In the statistical region of the Adriatic Croatia, employment of young people with higher education levels is only 57 percent, while in the continental part of the country, job opportunities for those with higher education are much better and 72 percent find employment within three years of graduation.
Eurostat states that in addition to the unemployed from the official register, another 22,000 economically inactive workers in the second quarter were employed in Croatia, these people weren’t registered as unemployed but were clearly interested in getting job when one was available to them. A year earlier, 27,000 people went into employment during the same period. In the third quarter, 45,000 economically inactive people got jobs last year. All this shows that people do want to work if given the opportunity to do so.
Among the 10 most sought after jobs currently offered, those in the low-paying service sectors continue to dominate.
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