A total of 1.668 million people in Croatia were in employment in the second quarter of 2020, about 10,000 fewer than at the same time in 2019, while the number of people out of work rose by 7,000 to 115,000, which puts the survey unemployment rate at 6.4%, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (DZS).

The DZS noted that its workforce survey was facing difficulties in data collection, verification and processing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that online face-to-face interviews were mostly replaced by telephone interviews.

Compared with the first quarter of the year, the number of people employed increased by 19,000, or 1.2%, while compared with the second quarter of 2019 their number fell by 10,000 or 0.6%.

At the same time, the number of unemployed people went up by 6.5% year on year, while compared with the first quarter it remained almost the same.The survey showed that 115,000 people were out of work in the second quarter of 2020, as against 108,000 in the second quarter of 2019, while their number in the first quarter of this year rose by 8,000 to 123,000.

The survey unemployment rate, as a percentage of unemployed people in the economically active population, was 6.4%, which is an increase of 0.3 percentage points year on year and a decrease of 0.6 percentage points quarter on quarter. The survey unemployment rate was 6.1% in the second quarter of 2019 and 7.0% in the first quarter of 2020.

The economically active population comprised 1.783 million people, up by 11,000 persons or 0.6% on the quarter and down by 3,000 or 0.2% on the year. The non-active population included 1.730 million people, down by 12,000 from the first quarter and by 4,000 from the second quarter of last year.

The activity rate, which shows a percentage of economically active people in the working-age population, reached 50.8% in the second quarter of 2020, increasing by 0.4 percentage points from the previous quarter and by 0.1 percentage points from the second quarter of 2019.

The employment rate, as a share of employed people in the working-age population, was 47.5% in the second quarter of this year, up by 0.6 percentage points from the previous quarter and down by 0.2 percentage points from the second quarter of last year.

“Relatively favourable movements on the labour market in the third quarter will reflect the effect of economic unlocking and most likely the the fact that the summer tourist season started later than usual,” analysts at Raiffeisen Bank said in a comment on the DZS report.

They expect the relatively favourable labour market movements to continue in the third quarter on the back of seasonal (un)employment trends and extended government support measures.