A total of 1.704 million Croatians had gainful employment in Q3 2019, a year-on-year increase of 15,000 or 0.9 percent, according to latest employment data released by the state statistics bureau on Friday. In the same period, the number of job-seekers fell to 103,000, a 22.6 percent drop over the last 12 months, the state statistics bureau said.

The survey unemployment rate, which measures the share of unemployed people out of the total active population, fell to 5.7 percent in Q3 2019, down by 1.6 percentage points year-on-year. The active population, including both employed and unemployed persons was set by the statistics bureau at 1.807 million, an annual decrease of 15,000.

The activity rate, which shows a percentage of the active population in the working-age population, increased to 51.4 percent in Q3 2019 up by 0.7 percentage points from the previous quarter, and down by 0.2 percentage points from Q3 2018. The employment rate, which measures the share of employed persons in the total working-age population, was 48.4 percent in Q3 2019, a 0.5 percentage points increase from Q3 2018.