The number of jobless Croatians registered with the Croatian Employment Office (HZZ) at the end of December 2009 came to 291,545, or 3% (8,609 people) up from November. The number of jobless Croatians went up 21.2% year on year.
The HZZ projects a rise in the number of jobless Croatians to over 300,000this spring due to the economic downturn and GDP decline in 2009.
We are going to propose a pro-active employment policy in order to reversethis negative trend, the HZZ director Ankica Paun Jarallah told a newsconference in Zagreb on Monday.
She announced that Croatia would be able to use pre-accession funds of theEuropean Union later this year for this purpose.
In December 2009, there were 25,465 new entries into the lists of joblesspeople, which was 5.8% less than new entries in November and 22 % more than thenumber of new entries in December 2009.
During the entire 2009, a total of 270,557 people lodged new joblessapplications with the HZZ, which was by 35.2% more than in 2008.
Broken down by sector, most of new job seekers came from the manufacturingsector (45,290 or 20.2 %), wholesale and retail commerce (44,858 or 20%),accommodation provision and catering (33,130 or 14.7 %) and construction(27.396 or 12.2%).
Broken down by county, jobless people from Split County accounted for 12.8%of all unemployed Croatians in 2009 and jobless people in the City of Zagrebaccounted for 11.5%. They were followed by Osijek County (10.9%), VukovarCounty (6.6 %) and Sisak County (6.4%).
