"The education system must be able to respond to labor market challenges," state agency Hina quoted the Minister for Labor, Pension System, Family, and Social Policy, Marin Piletic as saying at a conference in Labin on Tuesday.

The conference focused on ways of boosting economic development through labor policies and continued investment in education.

Piletic said that “despite the extraordinary circumstances in which the global and European economies have found themselves in the last three years, the Croatian labor market has been making progress and contributing to growth and development.”

He said that “in the last six years, during the term of this government, the number of unemployed persons has declined considerably, adding that in August 2022 there were around 102,000 fewer jobseekers than in August 2016.”

€133m annually allocated for inclusion of the unemployed in the world of work

“At the same time, the number of persons in employment increased by 182,000 as a result of the continued implementation of active employment policy measures, which proved to be an important instrument for the inclusion of unemployed persons in the world of work,” Piletic said.

He noted that the government had allocated around 1 billion kuna (€133m) annually for this purpose, investing over 6.7 billion kuna (€893m) since October 2016 and including nearly 200,000 persons, a third of whom were young people, on the labour market.

Developing modern labour market

The focus in the future will be on the positive trends and on developing a modern labor market, primarily by increasing workers’ competencies to make them capable of responding to technological challenges, Piletic said.

“Croatia has a problem of so-called structural unemployment, where on the one hand there is a growing demand from employers for workers in occupations that are in short supply, such as construction, manufacturing, tourism and trade, while on the other hand there are fewer workers with suitable skills, which is the result of the decline in unemployment,” Piletic said.

He said that the government will continue to “strengthen the Croatian labor market in the European and global context” by creating sustainable and quality jobs, promoting healthy businesses and investing in workers’ acquisition of additional skills.