January the 18th, 2025 – The country’s demographic crisis continues to spiral as a concerning 112,000 people under the age of 34 vanish from the Croatian labour market.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Ljubica Gataric/VL writes, the age structure of the workforce in Croatia is changing dramatically. Back in 2008, Croatian companies and institutions employed around 609,000 young people under the age of 34. Today, the number of employees under the age of 34 has dropped to an incredibly concerning 497,000.
In those sixteen years, 112,000 workers have disappeared from the Croatian labour market, which is equivalent to the whole population of Rijeka. What’s even worse is that this decline hasn’t compensated for by the massive import of foreign labour, which is mostly made up of younger people, according to what can be seen on the streets of Zagreb.
The age structure of the people who were issued 200,000 work permits last year has never been published. Today, there are about 37,000 fewer young people aged 25 to 29 than here were back in 2008, a minus of 39,000 between the ages of 20 and 24, as well as a minus of 32,000 between the ages of 30 and 34. The future is highly unlikely to bring improvements for the Croatian labour market. This is because in 2008, the number of births in Croatia stood at around 50,000 per year, which means that the number of children born was around 18,000 more than now.
“It was clear that demography would determine Croatian labour market trends, but I didn’t expect such a large decline in young people among the employed,” admitted former Minister of Labour and Member of Parliament Davorko Vidović, who, as a representative of the Chamber of Commerce (HGK), will be an external member of the Parliamentary Labour Committee.
“I was born in 1956 and my generation is the most numerous in Croatia. That year, 63,000 children were born in Croatia, and in my grandson’s generation, there were 32,000. We’re going to have a lot of problems,” added Davorko Vidović.
“It would be good if we took a more serious approach to dual education and, like Sweden and other Western European countries, introduced young people to the world of work in high school. Today, there are around 18,000 employed people under the age of 19 in Croatia, while 16 years ago there were 21,600. In Sweden, high school students immediately receive an employment contract with paid contributions and a certain salary, so that a work culture and early entry into the market are fostered,” said Vidović.
In Croatia on the other hand, faculties deliberately fail students and make it difficult for them to complete their studies in order to preserve their quotas and positions. Then we end up with “eternal” students are also useful to companies because they hire them cheaply through student services.
The drastic disappearance of young people from the Croatian labour market was also influenced by massive emigration, as it was mainly young and middle-aged people who left the country. Companies have so far covered the shortage of workers at a younger age by hiring foreigners and increasing the employment of older people. Today, there are 152,000 more people over the age of 55 in Croatia than there were back in 2008, which was otherwise considered a good economic year.
That year, there were only 40,000 employed people aged 60 to 64 in Croatia, while this age group now numbers 112,000 workers. There are also 36,000 people over the age of 65 in employment, including many retired people working four hours a day.
Of the 497,000 employed workers under the age of 34, 192,000 are exempt from paying health insurance contributions because their employers hired them permanently when they were under the age of 30.
With a biting demographic crisis, spiralling inflation and countless other issues, there are fewer and fewer young people left on the Croatian labour market.