Over the last three years Croatia's public administration lost 7,000 jobs. Local banks lost 2,000 jobs, while the IT sector has hired 11,000 people, state agency Hina said on Wednesday, summarizing an article by the Vecernji List daily.

“The favorable situation on the labor market is one of the elements based on which analysts believe that the recession that is already starting to affect much of the global economy will be mild and shorter than usual in Croatia,” Vecernji List said in their analysis.

This year Croatia has reached the level of employment from the record 2008, even though the country’s population shrank by 10 percent since then. This loss of population was made up by hiring foreign nationals, as a result of which Croatia had 1.637 million people in work at the end of September this year, Vecernji List said.

The number of people employed increased by 36,500 in a year and by 51,000 in two years. Due to the seasonality of the Croatian economy, the number of people in work fell by around 5,000 from August to September 2022, but the annual trend is positive, albeit with a recession looming.

While the services sector was hit hard during the Covid-19 pandemic, when young people were most affected, jobs may now be lost in the industrial sector, which is not Croatia’s forte anyway, unless the government supports affected companies with job retention measures.

In Croatia, around 250,000 people work in the manufacturing industry, 246,000 in trade, 130,000 in construction and 122,000 in education. For example, the education sector has increased the number of employees by around 7,000 in the last three years, which is inconsistent with demographic trends, the healthcare and social welfare sector has hired around 4,000 people, while public administration has lost around 7,000 employees. These are the data from the Croatian Pension Insurance Fund on the number of insured people and relate both to the private and the public sector.

Compared with the same period last year, the largest increases in employment were observed in the accommodation and food provision sector (10,000), the IT sector (4,700), and the manufacturing industry and professional, scientific and technical services (4,500), Vecernji List said.