ZAGREB, Dec 12, 2020 - The COVID-19 pandemic and the consequential lockdown have led to an unprecedented rise in the number of workers absent from work and an increased number of jobs lost, according to Eurostat, while the Vecernji List daily said in its comment on Saturday that Croatian workers fared worst in the EU.
The Vecernji List daily says that the corona crisis reduced this year's income of Croatian workers by 10.6% compared to 2019.
The estimated loss for median employment income at EU level is -5.2% in 2020 compared with 2019, says Eurostat.
Considering the estimated loss for median employment income, apart from workers in Croatia, also workers in Greece, France and Cyprus were adversely affected. Thus, the loss for median employment income in their countries was above 7%.
The smallest loss was in Latvia, Hungary, Denmark and Sweden.
The loss stems from COVID-related absence from work or fewer working hours, says the Zagreb-based daily newspaper.
Broken down by sector, the hospitality and tourism sector experienced a 16.8% loss, while the arts, entertainment and creative industries registered 10.9% loss for median employment income due to the corona crisis.
"The current COVID-19 pandemic crisis and the economic shutdown due to sanitary measures have led to an unprecedented rise in the number of workers absent from work and an increased number of jobs lost," the EU statistical office has reported.
The Eurostat notes that these conclusions are based on "the first results of a nowcasting exercise focused on the estimation of employment income losses along the distribution. All figures provided are part of the experimental statistics produced by Eurostat in the frame of advanced estimates on income inequality and poverty indicators."
"The impact of the crisis is very unequally spread between Member States and is particularly strong for the most vulnerable sub-groups of the working population, with low wage earners having losses 3 to 6 times larger than high wage earners in half of the EU Member States," says Eurostat.
Croatia among members that contribute most to mitigate income loss
National governments have put in place or activated short-term work schemes to address the COVID-19 economic challenges, in particular, policies to preserve jobs (wage compensation schemes). These contributed to mitigate the income loss in all EU countries with the overall income loss reduced by half, says Eurostat.
According to Eurostat, Croatia, France, Austria, Slovakia and the Netherlands are member states in which their respective governments have done the most to mitigate the income loss of employees.
The Vecernji List comments that the loss in Croatian could not be completely offset since state schemes and grants did not fully covered the original income and compensatory measures did not reach those who were left out of work.
