The Online Vacancy Index (OVI), which measures labor demand by tracking online job ads, indicated that labour demand in February was 18 percent down from February 2020, which shows that the labor market is still greatly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Institute of Economics Zagreb (EIZ) reported on Wednesday.

“The labor market at the beginning of 2021 continued to be under the strong influence of the Covid-19 pandemic. OVI for February 2021 shows that labour demand was 18 percent lower than in February 2020, which is a milder drop compared to movements in the previous months,” EIZ said.

In January 2021, OVI fell by 33 percent year-on-year, which was the biggest drop in labor demand since May 2020. It dropped by 25 percent in December, 30 percent in November, 21.5 percent in October, 27.8 percent in September, 18 percent in July and 26 percent in June due to restrictions during the pandemic. The most extreme drop in OVI was recorded in May (57.4 percent) and April (74.7 percent).

EIZ said that the marked fall in demand for occupations in the service sector while on the other hand there was an increased demand for workers in the construction sector.

“The same trends were noticed in February this year, but there has also been an increase in the demand for occupations that are not related to the construction sector,” EIZ said.

For example, the demand for programmers has increased by 17 percent compared to February 2020.

It is interesting that the fall in labor demand can be mostly attributed to a decreased demand for part-time and seasonal jobs, which dropped 70 percent, while demand for jobs with fixed-term and permanent contracts dropped by less than 10 percent.

The OVI is a monthly index of online job advertisements developed by the EZI in cooperation with the job-seeking web portal MojPosao.