It is only this year that the employment rate in Croatia could reach the level of the pre-crisis 2008, when 1.6 million people had a job and paid contributions, the Monday issue of the Vecernji List daily reported.

Job offer is generally the scarcest in the winter months, but the market is waking up already in February, when demand for workers in agriculture, construction and tourism starts growing.

Currently 19,000 job vacancies are advertised by the national employment office, and the Ministry of the Interior’s Department for Aliens in January received around 4,500 applications for work permits for foreign nationals, the daily says.

Most applications, around 3,000, refer to jobs in the construction sector, while around 700 applications are for jobs in the tourism sector. This year, around 100,000 foreign nationals could be working in Croatia. Since the labour pool in neighbouring countries is decreasing, a growing number of workers are arriving from Asia.

In February around 139,000 unemployed persons were registered with the national employment office and if the demand for workers remains the same as last year, when around 150,000 people found employment through the employment office, many of whom found temporary jobs, the official unemployment figures could fall below 100,000 by the summer.

Around 37,000 of the unemployed are people aged under 29 and they are likely to find a job more easily. Around 46,000 jobless are people who have been unemployed for a long time, says the daily.