The results of the latest survey on labour in Croatia are devastating.
As much as 77 percent of respondents in a recent poll said they were ready to leave Croatia for a new job. Although among them the majority would move abroad only for a better job in their profession (57 percent), 43 percent would accept any job. The survey conducted by the MojPosao employment website also showed that respondents from Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were more willing to accept any kind of job abroad than people in other European countries, reports RTL on February 18, 2017.
The study was done in 11 European countries (Croatia, Latvia, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Czech Republic and Slovakia), and it included a total of 35,000 respondents.
In addition to Croatia, the highest degree of willingness to move abroad was shown by respondents from Serbia (82 percent) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (79 percent), while the number of people willing to relocate abroad was the lowest in the Baltic countries – Estonia and Latvia (62 percent) and Lithuania (64 percent).
More than 40 percent of respondents from Croatia and Serbia, and half of respondents from Bosnia and Herzegovina, are ready for accept any job abroad. In other countries this percentage is much lower, for example 25 percent in Estonia, 27 percent in Poland, and 32 percent in Lithuania and Latvia.
Men (81 percent) are more willing to relocate abroad than women (73 percent). Regarding age groups, people younger than 25 years are at the top with 80 percent of them saying they are willing to move abroad, followed by those between 25 and 34 years old (79 percent). The main incentive for the relocation are higher salaries (69 percent), while betters opportunities for career development are not so popular as a reason (38 percent).
Among reasons why people would not want to move abroad, the first place belongs to the problem of long-term separation from family and friends. Communication in a foreign language is an obstacle for a quarter of the respondents, while a fifth worry that “they would be considered foreigners”. One fifth also thought they would feel anxious in another country.
Most people would go abroad for a period longer than one year, a fifth for a few months, while the rest would be willing to work abroad just for a period of several weeks.
In 2016, the MojPosao website published over 1,100 job ads for employment abroad, which was 14 percent more than the year before. About 17 percent of ads asked for an university degree, while the rest demanded a high school degree or less. Most ads were posted for vacancies in Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria and Slovenia. The most wanted occupations abroad were electricians and software developers.
