The average number of the unemployed in this year's first half was 253,000, or 6,000 less than in the last six months of 2003, according to the survey. The figure is lower than that of the Croatian Employment Bureau, which said there were 295,646 jobless people at the end of June 2004.
The Labour Survey, which is conducted with International Labour Organisation methods, covers every person who in the surveyed period did any job for money, regardless of their formal status or method of being paid.
The employment rate at the end of June 2004 was 44 percent, up one percent from December 2003. There were 1.83 million working age people in Croatia at the end of June this year, while 1.58 million were employed.