Croatia's seasonality is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to employment and economic woes.
While tourism is by far Croatia's largest and most lucrative economic sector, bringing in eye-watering sums of money each summer season, on the other side of the coin, it remains to be a huge thorn in the domestic economy's side. Yin and yang.
Each season, the masses from the rest of Europe and from much further afield descend upon the country in their droves, from the air, from the land and indeed from the sea, spending their hard earned cash in destinations all along Croatia's spectacular coast, and more recently in its continental parts, stimulating the economy and resulting in the mass employment of the country's residents in various positions, from chefs to waiters and from life guards to sales personnel.
While getting a job is much easier when the sun comes out and the planes start arriving, the problem many employers are currently having is finding someone to do the job, with many young residents taking advantage of the country's EU membership and heading off abroad in seatch of a better life and a higher wage.
And so the disbalance continues to swing on a broken pendulum, with huge numbers of Croats who decided to remain in the country successfully gaining employment in good positions along the coast, but being sure to lose them once the tourists go home. Croatia's immense reliance on seasonality is both a blessing and a curse for the domestic economy.
As Ljubica Gataric/Vecernji List writes on the 2nd of June, 2018, the current unemployment rate in Croatia stands at 9.1%, close to that of the eurozone, 0.1 percentage points lower than in France, with the Czech Republic leading with 2.2 percent.
According to HZMO's data, the number of pension insurers increased in April to 1,514 million, which is 25,000 more than in March. With the arrival of the tourist season, employment is once again on an upward path, but MacroHub of the Faculty of Economics states that there are still 103,000 less people employed than there were at the end of 2008, an otherwise extremely tumultuous year for the country's economy and job market.
Seasonally adjusted data shows that out of 25,000 newly employed people in April, as many as 21,500 people have managed to gain employment owing to the fast approach of the tourist season. New jobs, therefore, are mostly of a very limited duration.
According to Eurostat, unemployment rate in Croatia fell to 9.1 percent in April, a mere 0.6 percentage points lower than the overall unemployment rate in the eurozone. Croatia is still ranked 24th in the number of people in a working-age population who are unable to find a job.
Click here for the original article by Ljubica Gataric for Vecernji List
