In the last quarter of 2020, there were 1.63 million people in employment in Croatia, which is 41,000 fewer year on year, while the number of jobless people increased by 36,000 to 165,000, the State Bureau of Statistics (DZS) reported on Wednesday.

The data refers to a Labour Force Survey using the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) methodology of comparable data of employment and unemployment.

According to the survey, there were 1.63 million people actively employed in Croatia in Q4 2020, which was 44,000 or 2.6% fewer than in Q3, while there were 41,000 or 2.4% fewer y-o-y.

At the same time unemployment increased by 28% on the year and 22% on the quarter.

The employment rate, which shows the share of employed persons in the active population, in the period from October to December last year amounted to 46.6%, which is a decrease of 1.2 percentage points q-o-q and a decrease of 1.1 percentage points y-o-y.

The unemployment rate in Q4 2020 was 9.2%, which is an increase of 1.7 percentage points q-o-q and 2 percentage points y-o-y.

In Q4 2020 there were 3.51 million working-age people in Croatia (aged 15 or more), of whom 1.799 million were active and 1.71 million were inactive.

The share of the active population in the working-age population people was 51.3% in Q4 2020, which is 0.4 percentage points less than in Q3 2020 and  unchanged compared with the last quarter of 2019.