August the 14th, 2023 – Just under 28,000 Croatian pensioners are continuing to beef up their monthly earnings by continuing to work part-time. Most of them work in the trade sector.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the construction and tourism sectors are famously making up for the lack of labour force available to them already in Croatia by importing third-country national workers from abroad.
The trade sector, while suffering from the same issue, continues to focuses more on the Croatian supply of labour. They typically employ students and even Croatian pensioners to make sure they’ve got enough staff. Although in terms of number of employees, the trade sector is right next to the processing industry, which has the most workers in all of Croatia, the trade sector currently employs four times fewer foreigners than the processing industry and ten times less than the construction or tourism sectors.
The trade sector is number one in employing Croatian pensioners
While managing to avoid employing third-country nationals so far, the trade sector comes first in terms of the employment of Croatian pensioners. Data taken from the Croatian Pension Insurance Institute shows that back at the end of June 2023, 4,649 Croatian pensioners were employed in stores on a half-time basis, according to the Rijeka-based portal Novi list/Jagoda Maric. On the other hand, according to data taken from the Ministry of Trade, a total of 3,094 work permits for foreign workers (from outside the EEA) had been issued by the end of July this year.
It isn’t only the trade sector…
The number of Croatian pensioners currently employed in the catering and hospitality sector or the construction sector is over ten times less than the number of third-country nationals employed in them. However, these branches do also reach out to pensioners, and back in June, there were 2,899 of retirees working in construction, and 2,332 in accommodation and food preparation and service.
Taking up employment like this doesn’t result in the loss of pension rights
So far, the Croatian Government’s decision to expand the circle of pensioners who can work up to half the normal working time, i.e. 20 hours a week, without losing their pension, has greatly benefited the trade sector. The sector managed to at least partially replace its lack of workers as a result of the move. Almost every fifth pensioner who was employed in this way in June was employed in a shop of some sort.
At the end of June this year, 27,761 Croatian pensioners were free to beef up their household budgets by continuing to work during their retirement, which is one thousand more than the previous month and almost five thousand more than at the same time last year. The number of working pensioners was probably still growing throughout the month of July, and judging by the advertisements of the Croatian Employment Service, the need for work taken up by Croatian pensioners is still present, especially in trade.
Seasonality doesn’t affect the trade sector in terms of employment quite as much as other parts of society
Currently, 657 salespeople are wanted through the ads published by the Croatian Employment Service, most of these ads are open until the end of August or mid-September. In the separate section where jobs for Croatian pensioners are being offered, 105 jobs in shops are being advertised. This means that the employer’s plan is to fill almost every sixth open job position in the coming period with retirees. Most of the jobs on the websites of the services that mediate in the employment of students are also from the trade sector.
In all three cases, the jobs are being offered for a longer time and are located throughout Croatia. They are clearly not motivated solely by the increased intensity of trade during the summer tourist season. Apparently, even with non-working Sundays now a reality, which employers claimed would mean a greater number of layoffs in trade, didn’t reduce the pressure of labour shortages, which almost all industries in the country are struggling with.
Thus, after trade, the jobs of nurses are mostly being offered to Croatian pensioners, and these ads are mainly published by institutions which deal with the professional care of the elderly and infirm. Elderly fellow citizens, those who are retired, but still not infirm and fully able to work, will obviously take care of those who need it more and more. About a thousand and a half Croatian pensioners are already working in healthcare on a half-time basis, and there are more and more frequent cases of the state reaching out to doctors or nurses who have already retired to return to work. Croatian pensioners are also being offered jobs as cooks, waiters and kitchen assistants, and an offer has also been published for the employment of fourteen retirees to take up employment as delivery workers.
The grey economy is also ever present
In addition to all these examples, which are the result of a lack of manpower, there is also a certain grey area in many industries, which isn’t currently being discussed too much in Croatia. Those who are engaged in some way in this economic grey area are increasing. The statistics of the Croatian Pension Insurance Institute show that in June 2023, 3,214 Croatian pensioners were employed for four hours per day in a group of “leaders and members of legislative bodies, leaders and officials of state bodies and directors”.
This primarily involves hiring directors, and these are typically individuals who retired from their companies almost on that very same day and then returned to work for four hours. In this way, they significantly relieved their companies of state levies, and their total monthly earnings, which now consist of a state pension and a salary for half the working time, didn’t end up being significantly reduced.
