Does the Zagreb-based Hendal agency's survey reveal anything new?

A lot can be said of the Croatian domestic economic situation, and even more can be said about the level of young people leaving the country in their droves in search of higher standards, more job security and a better wage in other European countries, with those further west like Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom among the most attractive of all.

Potential staff can't find employers, and potential employers can't find staff. It's a bit like Where's Waldo but with serious consequences. As the buses and planes continue to leave and the situation gets more and more pressing, it's difficult to know just how one can manage to get to the raw truth lying behind the sensational journalism, the shocking headlines and the apparently welcome trends of negativity.

The situation is a dire one, and it shows no immediate signs of recovery, or does it?

As Lucija Spiljak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 7th of November, 2018, the Hendal market research agency, based in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, explored the habits of young people for the very first time in the Republic of Croatia.

The Zagreb-based Hendal agency has been investigating the habits and attitudes of the country's 25-year-olds. The first such survey conducted by the research agency here in Croatia shows that as many as 56.8 percent of the respondents do work, 25.9 percent are in some sort of education, and just 16 percent of those contacted are unemployed or seeking a job.

58.7 percent of young people are currently working in some sort of profession, and 21.7 percent claim that they aren't working in what would be termed as a profession by their own choice. Those people are budding entrepreneurs, and explain that they're taking that route in particular because as many as 50 percent of them are seriously considering starting their own business, while only 16 percent of them say they're definitely going to leave Croatia.

Croatia's young people, according to Hendal's research, aren't interested in politics, although 48.8 percent of them confirm that they do always go to the polls to vote.

Hendal's research reveals that most of them spend their free time cooking more than going out, encouragingly, most do not smoke, and in a somewhat lighter survey, 47.5 percent of them would choose to take their phones with them should they end up on a desert island, with more than six hours a day spent using a phone spent by 42.6 percent of the respondents.

Today, young people up to 25 years of age, of which there are about 49,000, don't see property and real estate as a priority.

Only 28.4 percent of them are sure they'll marry, and children are eventually planned by 69.8 percent of young people in Croatia.

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Click here for the original article by Lucija Spiljak for Poslovni Dnevnik