Croatian builders need 3,000 foreign workers to compensate for the outflow of qualified workers from Croatia, an estimate presented by the Croatian Chamber of Economy (HGK) on Thursday.
– Recently, there has been a noticeable large outflow of qualified workers from Croatia, especially bricklayers, carpenters, reinforcement workers, tilers, and similar professions, states the HGK press release.
The Vice President of HGK for construction, transport, and connections, Mirjana Čagalj, warns that the lack of workers with the necessary knowledge and skills is increasingly becoming a key limiting developmental problem for Croatian construction, as well as the economy as a whole.
– Despite regular advertising and seeking labor through the Croatian Employment Service (HZZ) and participation in job fairs, employers cannot replace the workers who have left, as there simply are not enough such workers in the Croatian labor market, emphasizes Čagalj.
She adds that companies cannot replace the employees who have left even by outsourcing part of the work to other contractors, as almost all business entities are facing the problem of labor shortages.
She warns that in the last few years, more than 53,000 jobs have been lost in the construction sector (34.4 thousand in legal entities and 18.7 thousand among craftsmen), and the share of construction in GDP has decreased from 8.5% to 4.4%. Additionally, in recent years, the volume of construction work has decreased by 46.6%, the value of completed work by 49.3%, the number of completed apartments by 69.2%, and the number of issued building permits is down by 46.3%.
– Construction has almost halved, and we can hardly expect recovery without importing labor as a fire-fighting measure during this period until a proper labor market is established in Croatia, emphasizes Čagalj, adding that addressing labor import as an emergency measure that occurred this year was a positive shift, but that the quotas are too small and unfairly distributed.
