In October 2018 Croatia had a total of 1.42 million employed, inching down by 0.6 percent or some 8,500 compared to September. The national unemployment rate that month was 9.1 percent, up from the 8.4 percent record low in the month before, the state statistics bureau said on Tuesday.

“After eight consecutive months of decreasing unemployment rates, this kind of jump is a seasonal occurrence on the local labour market commonly observed at the end of September and in early October,” analysts of the Raiffeisenbank Austria (RBA) said commenting on the report.

“As seasonal summer jobs end, a number of workers go back to re-register at the employment bureau,” resulting in a month-on-month increase in job-seekers by 8.5 percent, to little over 140,000, RBA analysts said.

Year-on-year, the 9.1 percent unemployment rate in October was 2.1 percentage points down from October 2017, when it stood at 11.2 percent.

“The year-on-year drop in unemployment rate came as a result of the fact that the number of unemployed people is falling at a much faster rate compared to the drop in the active labour force. As jobless levels continued to fall at double-digit rates, posting a 21.5 percent year-on-year drop, the active work force shrank by 2.6 percent over the same period,” RBA analysts added.

The unemployment rate is expected to continue growing month-on-month, before another seasonal decline by February or March 2019.

Meanwhile, a recently published bureau of statistics report showed that Croatian companies and businesses employed 1.215 million people at the end of October, inching up slightly by 0.2 percent from September.

By sector, the largest month-on-month drop in jobs was recorded in the tourist and hospitality industry, by 3.8 percent, which currently employs little over 80,000 people. This was followed by the administrative and auxiliary services sector, which posted a drop of 3.6 percent, to some 47,000 workers.

The highest month-on-month increase was in education, by 6.6 percent, which currently employs nearly 112,000 people, and in construction, which grew by 0.7 percent to almost 74,000 workers.

According to data collected by the state employment bureau, there were nearly 142,000 active job seekers registered in the country in October, or around 11,000 more than the month before.

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