February the 18th, 2025 – Croatia has the lowest male employment rate in the entire EU, but why is it exactly? The reasons are varied, but the country has surpassed the average when it comes to female employment.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Brnic writes, trends on the Croatian labour market throughout 2024 were primarily marked by positive developments. Unemployment rates reached their lowest levels yet, and employment rates obviously increased. Despite that, the latest Croatian Employment Service (CES) analysis and comparison with data for other EU countries shows that these developments are faster and more pronounced within the female population.
Comparing the latest available Eurostat data for the third quarter of last year, CES analysts indicate that the unemployment rate of men in Croatia increased. In the case of the employment rate, despite this positive result, Croatia still has the lowest level of male employment rate in the whole EU. But what’s the actual reason for this?
croatia might have the lowest male employment rate in the eu, but it also has a lot of war veterans
In the third quarter of last year, the total unemployment rate in Croatia fell from 6.5% (as recorded back during the same period in 2022) and 5.5% in 2023 to 5%. On the other hand, the unemployment rate of Croatian men in that interval ranged from 5.1% in 2022 and 4.8% in 2023, to 5.6% last year.
The Croatian employment rate at the level of the entire population in the third quarter of 2024 reached 73.7%, which is a 3% improvement compared to the last two years (and a little more than in 2022). The employment rate for men in Croatia was even higher, reaching 76% in the third quarter of last year (75.8% in 2022, and 75.0% in 2023).
With all that being said, when we compare this to all other EU Member States, including some others that were taken into consideration (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland), the Croatian employment rate for men is at the bottom. In contrast, the employment rate for women rose from 65.3% to 71.3% in two years. That followed a good trend in the unemployment rate, which fell from 6.4% to 4.2% during that period.
According to Tea Matković, a scientific advisor at the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb, the uneven trends and lower employment of working-age men in Croatia are largely a reflection of the ageing population. It’s also due to the simple fact that, according to the Croatian Veterans Act, 42,000 people are currently retired, mostly men, in the working-age group, between 50 and 64 years of age.
In addition, about 20 years ago, the largest sum of people in the Croatian population structure was between 35 and 55 years of age. Today, it’s between 55 and 64 years of age.
“Owing to that, the activity of this age group carries a lot of weight in the calculation of the general employment rate, which is calculated for the age group 15-64. Moreover, over 55,000 people exceed the age of 65 every year, while on the other hand, the cohort aged 25 is less than 40,000 young people. The ratio will now become even more unfavourable,” Matković pointed out.
croatia has the lowest male employment rate in the eu, but in some cases, the eu average has been surpassed…
From the available Eurostat data on trends by age group, it can also clearly be concluded that in the group of men aged 25 to 49, Croatia has reached the average employment rate for men at the EU level. In the case of women, it has actually surpassed the average. These employment trends have been more positive for women over the past two decades. The lag is only visible in the group of Croatian women aged 15 to 24, along with the aforementioned group of Croatian men aged 50 to 64.
A similar explanation was given by the Croatian Employment Service. When asked about the reasons why the employment rate for men is lower, their analysts claimed that Croatia isn’t at the bottom of the scale when looking at the employment rate for men aged 25 to 54. Four countries have lower employment rates for men in that age structure than Croatia, but this country is still lagging behind in terms of the employment rate for men aged 55 to 64. One of the reasons for this, according to the Croatian Employment Service, is the relatively large levels of early retirement.
similar situations in belgium and neighbouring slovenia
CES analysts also pointed to the fact that in some EU countries such as Belgium and Luxembourg, the employment rate of men is also low, and they cite relatively high pensions as the reason for this.
It’s also interesting to note that in neighbouring Slovenia, with which Croatia so often loves to to compare itself, the employment rate of men recorded a decline in the observed period. It dropped from from 81.9% to 79.9%, and this contributed to the overall Slovenian employment rate also experiencing a downward trend. In most EU countries, the general employment rate has been increasing over the past three years, with a few exceptions where a decline has been recorded, such as in Finland and Sweden.
