In the fourth quarter of 2017 there were 1.639 million employed persons in Croatia, or 60,000 up year-on-year, while numbers of jobless fell by 44,000 to 200,000, results of a poll conducted by state statistics bureau said on Friday (March 23).

Employment rate, which indicates ratio of the employed against the total working age population, was 46.3 percent in Q4, down from 47.5 in the previous quarter but up by 1.9 percent compared to Q4 2016.

At the same time, unemployment rate was 10.9 percent, or 1.9 percent up from the previous quarter but 2.5 percent down year-on-year. According to the poll, in the last three months of 2017 there were 3.54 million people of working age in Croatia, which includes everyone above 15 years of age, out of which 1.84 was active and the remaining 1.7 million inactive.

Statistics show that since Q3 2016 the working age population is shrinking at a rate of 4,000-5,000 people per quarter. In Q4 2017 the number of working-age persons fell by 18,000 year-on-year.