Eurasia Press & News
ZAGREB – Croatia is likely to have up to 25,000 more jobless this year, the head of the European Union candidate’s unemployment bureau said on Friday, giving a much lower estimate than employers and analysts.
“Based on last year’s and this year’s expected growth figures, we estimate that annual average unemployment in Croatia will this year rise by between 10 and 12 percent”.
The total number of unemployed in December was 240,455 people, with the jobless rate at 13.7 percent. Paun Jarallah said the number of unemployed in February had risen year-on-year for the first time since 2005.
“At the end of February we had 262,821 registered unemployed people. It is 3.4 percent more than in January and 1 percent up from February last year,” she said. The state statistics bureau will release the February unemployment rate next Friday.
Croatia’s economy rose 3.1 percent in the first nine months of 2008, but most analysts expect a contraction in the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. The government, which originally expected a 2 percent growth this year, cut the forecast to minus 2 percent last week.
According to the unemployment bureau data, the industries mostly affected by job losses in February were textile, wood processing, metalworks and food production.
Earlier this year Croatia’s association of employers said 150 people were losing their jobs every day and some 50,000 jobs could be lost this year due to recession.
