The Online Vacancy Index (OVI), which tracks online ads posted on local websites, showed that labor demand surpassed pre-pandemic levels in July 2021, state agency Hina said on Monday, citing the Zagreb Institute of Economics.

The Institute said this was the third month in a row that an increase in labor demand was recorded when compared to the pre-pandemic year 2019.

In July 2021 the labor demand was 29 percent up from July 2019.

“These favorable movements are the reflection of a successful tourist season thus far, and of the later hiring of seasonal workers,” the Institute said.

When observing regional movements on the labor market, the highest recovery has been recorded in the Adriatic region, as expected, while the lowest recovery has been observed in the east of Croatia.

Moreover, demand for waiters, cooks and hotel staff has significantly risen in July 2021 compared to July 2019.

The OVI is a monthly index of online job advertisements developed by the EIZ in cooperation with the web portal MojPosao.hr. The index aims to provide timely information regarding current labor demands.

The OVI is developed by means of simple enumeration of single new job advertisements whose application deadlines end within the same month for which the index is being calculated. Given that advertisements published by only one web portal are taken into account, the number of job advertisements is expressed as an index (with the base year being 2015).