Croatia is a paradoxical country in many senses, and that is a sentence that has been written many times over the years. Paradoxes can be seen across all spectrums of society, and when it comes to the Croatian economy, the paradoxes are enough to make one scratch ones head. 

You'll hear one (or more) of any of these things in relation to the Croatian economy: There are no jobs. There are jobs but the pay isn't enough. We can't find the staff. We're willing to give the staff good wages, food, accommodation and a decent amount of time off. We've got many jobs available but nobody wants to work. I can't find a job and I'll do anything... but not that (as Meatloaf might have said had he been searching for work in Croatia).

You get the point. Sadly it appears that this situation isn't one that is about to remedy itself anytime soon.

As Ljubica Gataric/VL/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 5th of November, 2018, migration can indeed go in both directions, but at the minute, Croatia's labour force is taking advantage of the EU's freedom of movement policy and heading abroad in search of better lives, better wages, more security and more opportunities, and only recently has the the import of workers from elsewhere to Croatia been discussed. But why would they come?

With the absence of young workers becoming an ever-increasing problem, domestic and foreign companies and institutions operating in the country are turning to the older population more and more to try to keep the Croatian economy afloat. The numbers are intractable and show that over the past ten years, Croatia has lost about 127,000 young people aged up to 29, corresponding to the population of an entire city, such as Rijeka.

Such a reduction in the number of young people has naturally seen the domestic labour market suffer, causing a dramatic shift in the age structure of employed workers. In ten years, which means long before Croatia joined the European Union, the number of employed persons in Croatia decreased by 122,419, measured by the number of insured persons registered in pension insurance, according to Vecernji list.

Most of this loss relates to the group of young workers aged up to 29 years, of whom there were 104,000 less employed at the end of 2017 than when compared to a decade ago, in 2007.

The remaining deficiency for the Croatian economy is in the next age group of workers aged between 30 and 34 years.

After the Croatian economy emerged from the recession, four years ago, the total number of insured persons increased by 95,000 to approximately 1.45 million. But, as Darko Orčić, an analyst at the Employment Service, recalls, the number of employees in the age group of 25 to 34 is still very much declining.

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Click here for the original article by Ljubica Gataric/VL on Poslovni Dnevnik

Money isn't something most people are usually that willing to openly discuss, but there are times when one needs to look at the situation and see what can be improved. Who better to do that than the tax administration?

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 1st of November, 2018, while these figures don't reveal the amount of people in Croatia working ''on the black'', according to the tax administration's data reveal, more than half of the country's registered employees, all 847,750 of them, are grouped into categories with monthly net wages of 2,500 to 5,500 kuna.

According to the information provided, the average monthly net wage per person in employment in legal entities in the Republic of Croatia for August 2018 was 6,264 kuna, which is nominally 0.9 percent more than it was in comparison with just one month previously, in July 2018, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported.

The question of just how many people actually do receive this so-called average salary is a pressing one, and the data from the country's tax administration for the past year has now revealed the answer. They published a table of employee structures in 32 categories of net income for the year 2017.

A net salary of between 6,001 to 6,500 kuna seems to be being received by a total of 86,985 people in Croatia, out of a total of 1,592,215 registered employees across the country, according to a report from Novi list.

The tax administration reports that as many as 1,166,731 employees are receiving a salary lower than the average, and as a result of that, more than half of the country's employees, 847,750 of them, are grouped into categories with monthly net wages of 2,500 to 5,500 kuna.

It appears from the provided data that less than 300,000 employees in the entire country have ''take home'' net salaries in the amount of 9,001 to 14,000 kuna per month.

As far as very high salaries are concerned, 269 employees take home more than 100,000 kuna per month, 921 salaries are between 50,001 to 100,000 kuna, and just 789 are from 40,001 to 50,000 kuna per month.

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