Official statistical data often conceal the true picture of what is happening every day in our society.

The latest release by the Croatian Bureau of Statistics on the active population brings seemingly very positive news for the Croatian economy during 2025. However, when the published figures are examined more deeply, an unusual paradox is revealed that clearly shows how far citizens actually are from the state institutions that should be helping them find employment. To make the situation easier to understand, it is important to know that statistics divide citizens into those who work and those who are actively looking for a job, while the third group of the inactive population includes everyone else who, for various reasons, does not participate in the labor market.

Employment is rising

Looking at the basic figures, the situation appears extremely favorable and inspires optimism. According to a survey conducted during 2025, 1,702,000 employed persons were recorded in the Republic of Croatia. If we compare this with the previous year, we see a clear increase of 19,000 workers, representing growth of 1.1 percent.

On the other side of the spectrum, the number of unemployed fell to 87,000 people, which is a decrease of 2,000 people or 2.7 percent compared with 2024. The employment rate for people in their prime working years, specifically those aged 15 to 64, rose to 68.8 percent, achieving an increase of 0.5 percentage points. At the same time, the unemployment rate for the same age group fell to just 4.9 percent, an improvement of an additional 0.2 percentage points. These results were obtained using a strict methodology aligned with the Statistical Office of the European Union, which means that our data are fully objective and comparable with the data of all other member states.

Where did the unemployed disappear to?

The most interesting part of this report lies in the direct comparison between what people anonymously admit in the survey and what is written in the cold state registers. This is where we arrive at the true absurdity of our bureaucratic system.

The survey finds 87,000 genuinely unemployed people in the country. Nevertheless, the official records of the Croatian Employment Service register only 81,000 reported persons. Even more surprising is the fact that as many as 33.1 percent of citizens who are actually unemployed do not want to have anything to do with the employment service at all and did not even try to register there.

They look for work through their own private channels, completely ignoring the intermediary role of the state. On the other side of the story, we have 23,000 people who are properly registered with the employment office, but in fact do not meet the strict international criteria for unemployment at all. This means that these persons, who make up a huge 28.6 percent of all registered unemployed citizens, are in reality not looking for work at all nor are they available for work at short notice. According to the clear explanation of statistical experts, these are persons who are registered primarily in order to obtain certain social or material rights through that formal status, thereby creating a completely false picture of the labor supply in official records.

The mass flight of citizens from official records becomes completely logical when we look at the real experiences of people trying to find work through state institutions. One of the clearest examples of a bad system is the story of a young unemployed man from Zagreb who personally experienced the complete uselessness and rigidity of the rules of the labor exchange. Under threat of being removed from the records, his adviser forces him to apply for job advertisements that have absolutely nothing to do with his profession. Recently, he was obliged to respond to a job advertisement from a company in Pula and Zagreb seeking a servicer of audio equipment and stage lighting. In that advertisement, the employer explicitly requires at least two years of work experience in servicing electronic equipment, a category B driver's license, and willingness to work in the field, all conditions that this engineer does not meet at all. Although he clearly explained to the adviser that he does not have the required qualifications and that this is not his field at all, he received the cold bureaucratic response that he must apply, which ultimately only wastes both his time and the valuable time of the employer who will have to read a completely misguided application.

Who is even considered a worker?

To fully understand this publicly available information and the difference in the data, it is necessary to explain how institutions count workers at all. Administrative sources apply exclusively a formal definition of employment, which means they recognize only persons who have an officially established employment relationship with an employer for a fixed or indefinite period.

On the other hand, the Labour Force Survey follows real life and counts as employed all persons who, during the observed week, performed any kind of work for money or payment in kind for at least a single hour. This broad category also includes unpaid assisting family members who work in the family business, and even farmers who produce goods primarily intended for sale on the market. Such a comprehensive approach explains why surveys always show a much more dynamic picture than rigid administrative registers, which lag behind the real situation on the ground.

Who makes up the Croatian labor force?

When we take a closer look at who the people are whose work carries the domestic economy every day, we notice clear and expected differences between the sexes and levels of education. Among working-age men, the employment rate stands at a high 55.9 percent, while among women that rate is noticeably lower at 47.2 percent. The educational structure reveals that by far the largest number of employed citizens, as many as 56.8 percent, have completed vocational schools, which in the domestic education system includes lower and secondary vocational qualifications. They are followed by highly educated citizens with completed professional and university studies, master's degrees, and doctorates, who together make up a respectable 34.8 percent of the total number of employed.

The Croatian economy still relies heavily on several traditional and key sectors. Manufacturing remains the largest employer and leads by employing 263,000 people. Right behind it is the broad wholesale and retail trade sector, in which 238,000 workers earn their living. Construction strongly absorbs labor with 122,000 employed persons, while the extremely important activities of accommodation provision and food preparation and serving employ 110,000 citizens.

The Croatian labor market is moving in the right direction, but at the same time it carries the enormous burden of deep structural and institutional illogicalities.

The state can rightly boast of continuous employment growth and a stable reduction in the total number of unemployed citizens, which is an undoubted macroeconomic success. However, the realization that more than a third of genuinely unemployed people consciously boycott official state employment institutions, while at the same time almost 30 percent of those registered there are not actually looking for a job at all, represents an extremely strong warning to all public policy makers.

This social phenomenon undoubtedly suggests that citizens' trust in institutions has been seriously damaged and that the complex bureaucratic apparatus is being used on a mass scale to obtain mere social benefits, instead of for its primary purpose of quality and rapid matching of motivated workers with employers. A thorough revision and adjustment of this outdated system imposes itself as an absolutely necessary step for a more transparent and healthier economic future for Croatia.