August 11, 2022 - Employment in Croatia is always an interesting topic. The fluctuations of unemployment rates are in line with the tourist season, with the increase usually happening in August. This year's self-employment increase, however, all happened thanks to women who have started their trades or companies.

As Poslovni reports, a streak of five months of consecutive reductions in the number of unemployed in the records of the Croatian Employment Service (HZZ) ended in July.

At the end of last month, 109,571 unemployed people were registered, i.e., 3,772 more than the month before, and the first third of August also points to the beginning of a seasonal increase in the number of unemployed (compared to yesterday, an increase of about 900 persons was recorded), although currently there are more than 16 thousand vacancies.

Last year, the seasonal deflation only started in August, but a little later seasonal employment started to increase. All in all, in year-on-year comparisons, significantly fewer unemployed persons are still registered with the Institute. Compared to last July, that amounts to 13 percent or 16,431 fewer.

The latest figures from the CES show that during July of this year, slightly less than 15.2 thousand people were newly registered in the unemployment register, or about five percent less than last year.

Every third person from the sector of education

At the same time, the majority (about 70 percent) came to the Institute directly from previous employment, while for every third of them that previous job was in education.

More than 2,500 newly registered persons entered the unemployment register having graduated from regular education, and nearly 1,900 persons registered with the Croatian Employment Service after previously being inactive.

At the same time, last month there were about 30 percent fewer exits from the unemployment register than in July last year, while more than eight thousand out of 11.4 thousand exited the register due to employment.

Nine out of ten (or a total of 7,234 people) established a working relationship with an employer, and the other 824 had other business activities. More than half (448) of them became self-employed by registering a trade, and more than 220 of them did so by establishing a company, while the rest mainly involved earning income from another independent activity that exceeds the amount of the average guaranteed benefit.

There were 5,420 of those who were in the records of the CES and were employed based on these business activities (and not by entering an employment relationship) in the first seven months of this year, or about a hundred more than in the same period last year.

Although there are more men in that group (and the largest number refers to starting a trade or company), it should be noted that practically the entire year-on-year growth is the result of an increase in such (self-)employment among women.

Most of the new employees who entered employment contracts with their employers in July (as well as the newly registered unemployed) were in the tourism and hospitality industries and the trade and processing industry.

Considering the seasonal characteristics of July, last month among the counties, Split-Dalmatia and Osijek-Baranja counties led the way in terms of employment, which are also the counties with the highest absolute numbers of registered unemployed (in Split-Dalmatia there are more than 18.5 thousand or almost 17 percent of the total unemployed in the Republic of Croatia, and in Osijek-Baranja more than 14.2 thousand or 13 percent).

European statistics

The share of the unemployed who receive minimum benefits has been trending downward in recent years, and recently that has been approximately a fifth. In July, it meant about 22 thousand users.

The unemployment rate according to the methodology of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Croatia was at 6.3 percent in the middle of the year (according to ILO standards, there were 114 thousand people without a job), i.e. significantly below 7.7 percent at the same time last year.

Although this 6.3 percent is slightly higher than Croatia’s historically lowest rate, unemployment is currently very low throughout the European Union, with places like the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Malta, and Hungary where it is within (up to) three percent, while Spain and Greece were the only ones with a double-digit unemployment rate according to ILO standards in June.

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Ever been browsing online mindlessly and come across a YouTube video showing how to create something and thought: Hang on, I could do that? One Croatian man from Kutina did exactly that and has thus decided to turn his hobby into a business, and if he had the time to pay attention solely to that, it would take off even faster than it has done already.

As Novac/Jasmina Trstenjak writes on the 28th of April, 2019, if we open our eyes a little bit, we'll see that there are ideas to start our own business all around us. Some of us stumble upon them, recognise them, and start from the idea itself, and some ideas literally come and find us and prevent us from bypassing them and remaining just as ideas.

Matija Kašner from the continental Croatian town of Kutina, who makes furniture from disposable pallets, says that in the case of his very own creation Sklepaj.me "everything began from itself, and quickly".

When my wife and I moved into this house, we didn't particularly like the furniture in the stores, and as I saw people doing innovative things from palets online, I decided to make a bed out of pallets and then a terrace. So then I decided to put what I'd made on Njuškalo (a Croatian buy and sell website) and try to sell it. One woman called me who wanted to equip her entire apartment house in Crikvenica with tables and chairs, and that was the first big job from which it all began,'' says Kašner.

He remembers thinking how big that job was and wondered whether or not he could manage to do it all in time. But, with the help of friends and even without the right tools - he succeeded. As his first client needed an invoice, he opened an obrt (small company) and officially turned his hobby into a job back at the end of 2013. Then, another project came for an IT company and that was great in the full sense of the word - he equipped the entire building.

The young IT team wanted something different, they ordered armchairs, beds because they had a "chill out" room, and the like. Sklepaj.me quickly started to grow bigger, and its initiator, an economist by profession, said the job would have grown at an even faster pace if he was only doing that.

Namely, Kašner comes from an entrepreneurial family, and given his business versatility, the entrepreneurial genes have obviously been passed down to him and, besides making furniture, he grows raspberries, rents out electric bikes and conducts tourist tours, is engaged in a family business, and addition to that, he's employed in a company in which he's the head of the branch.

''Sklepaj.me is just a hobby that in some way created itself and which I do after work. We don't live on that. We live from our wage,'' Kašner makes sure to confirm.

But, if he was engaged solely in this hobby, could he live from it? The idea with the pallets seems to be a great one. What's the real market potential? Where are the palets obtained? Is it an expensive hobby? How lucrative is it...? There are many questions.

''I'd expand the range and then yes, I then could live from it, but I'd have to exhibit at fairs, I'd have to be present in design spheres, etc. The order, or its quantity, depends on the revenue and sometimes that can be high only even with just one or two orders per year. Averages are difficult to come up with. There are no such rules. If I had to do three big orders per year for around 30,000 kuna, which is one nice cafe or hostel, I'd sign up tomorrow to do only that. That could provide for a decent life,'' Kašner says when discussing his innovative business that brought the strongest revenue in six years last year with only one project, which was his largest ever so far, for Zrće.

He also revealed that he's now negotiating orders that would be almost of the same size as that one. Namely, two shelves of furniture (60 armchairs, 30 tables, 60 bar tables...) were sent to Zrće, a project on which for two or three months, he worked intensively without any contact with the outside world for 10-12 hours per day.

When it comes to a series, everything depends on how many pieces someone orders, and so far he has already worked on tables, armchairs, deck chairs, bar stools and desks and even lamps. One armchair costs between 400 and 600 kuna, depending on whether they want a sponge putting on it or not, tables are about the same price, deck chairs are about 800-900 kuna, and the bar tables are of the same rank as deck chairs.

"I like to make sure the prices are acceptable, so when someone goes to the store and sees a rattan deck chair, he can see that for roughly the same money he can get something unique, and something that not many will have,''

He also mentions the seasonal rhythm of this job because someone who owns a tourist facility orders the furniture in the winter and then winter is spent working for the tourist season in summer. Then comes stagnation in June and July, and in August there are orders to arrange children's rooms, renovations for peoples houses and other similar things.

As Croatia's economic and demographic issues continue, there's a lot to be said for being creative and starting your own business to generate some income, even if it's just extra cash on the side, and this innovative and talented gentlemen from Kutina is the perfect example of exactly that mindset.

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Click here for the original article by Jasmina Trstenjak for Novac/Jutarnji