Croatia's registered unemployment rate increased from 9.4 percent in November 2018 to 9.6 percent in December, while the average rate for the whole of 2018 was 9.9 percent, showed the latest data published by the state statistics bureau.

This is the first time since data are collected that the registered unemployment rate is below 10 percent, Raiffeisenbank Austria (RBA) analysts said on Monday.

It noted that the increase in the registered unemployment rate was usual in the last months of the year.

The unemployment rate in December 2018 was down 2.4 percent from December 2017, when it stood at 12 percent.

The annual decrease in the unemployment rate reflects a stronger decline in the number of unemployed persons than in the number of economically active population, the analysts said.

In 2018, the number of unemployed people fell by 20.8 percent to 153,542, which was 40,426 fewer than in 2017. The number of active population dropped by 1.6 percent year on year.

RBA analysts noted that despite the two-digit annual rate of decline in the number of unemployed persons, the number of gainfully employed people last year remained roughly the same as in 2017.

They also said that many of the people removed from unemployment records last year were struck off from records for failing to comply with rules and for other reasons, and not because they had found work.

This suggests that some of the unemployed persons become economically inactive and some emigrate, RBA analysts said.

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