Jobs Challenges in Slavonia, Croatia – A Subnational Labor Market Assessment
A thriving region until the early 1990s, Slavonia, the eastern region of Croatia, has been confronted with stagnation and decline, ageing and outmigration as well as impoverishment ever since. This followed Croatia's homeland war of 1991-1995,...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/554611566303661972/Jobs-Challenges-in-Slavonia-Croatia-A-Subnational-Labor-Market-Assessment http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32300 |
| Summary: | A thriving region until the early 1990s,
Slavonia, the eastern region of Croatia, has been confronted
with stagnation and decline, ageing and outmigration as well
as impoverishment ever since. This followed Croatia's
homeland war of 1991-1995, with Slavonia one of the
frontlines, economic restructuring of its state-led economy
during the 1990s and 2000s and the global economic crisis of
the late 2000s. More recently, after Croatia's EU
accession in 2013 and coinciding with the economic upswing
since 2014 in Croatia and the EU, Slavonia's labor
market has started to tighten, with registered vacancies now
exceeding the number of job seekers for highly educated as
well as some unskilled and semi-skilled occupations.
However, inactivity and unemployment remain high. In 2017,
the share of the working-age population in work was only 51
percent, 10 percentage points below the rest of Croatia (61
percent) and 17 percentage points below the 2017 EU28
average. A legacy of war, limited availability of care
services, and especially lower education levels explain an
important part of Slavonia's much higher inactivity and
unemployment. On the demand side, labor productivity in
Slavonia's firms is systematically lower than in the
rest of the country (except in agriculture and forestry),
also consistent with Slavonia's sizeablewage gap. This,
together with general disenchantment of the Slavonian
population with the economicand business environment, has
prompted outmigration. At the same time, a small number of
firms alsooutperform their sectoral competitors elsewhere in
Croatia, signaling Slavonia's potential.Looking ahead,
private sector job creation remains a top priority,
especially focusing on Slavonia's lower educated, who
make up the bulk of the unemployed and inactive. This
especially requires a reduction in the regulatory burden and
an increase in Slavonian firms' competitiveness, which
will also help to close the substantial wage gap with the
rest of Croatia. Given the large share of its population in
agriculture and forestry-related activities (close to 30
percent), Program Slavonia's current focus on
agriculture and forestry is clearly warranted. With
Slavonia's longstanding history and labor force
experience in manufacturing and the rising number of
vacancies in this sector, so is attention to manufacturing. |
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