Croatia lost 10% of population in last decade, mostly young people. Reason – its one of the worst economies in the EU.
Croatia lost 10% of population in last decade, mostly young people. Reason – its one of the worst economies in the EU.
44 comments
Lot of Southen Countrys got this problem too. Young people leaving and its understandable when people got dog shit wages, insane taxing and very low purching power.
I think we should accept more refugees since everyone is leaving
guys, we lost one third of our population. You’ll manage.
Bulgaria towards Croatia:
“Those are some rookie numbers.”
Croatia has one of the most business unfriendly enviroments in the Europe. Laws are written in such general way that tax office can always twist it how they want and squeeze every last € out of small business (big ones are protected).
This leads to low wages, low number of people being employed, gray/black economy and emigration.
People are probably leaving because now they can move to other EU countries easily, but how much did the economy itself improve since EU? Croats living in Croatia, how different are the living standards now vs 10-15 years ago?
That’s the tragedy of free movement. Every economic crisis sees countries less capable of countering the effects loose their best skilled and young workers to countries better poised to withstand it. And the more talent a country looses the more unlikely it is for them to recover, further accelerating the exodus.
It’s beautiful tho, I hitched hiked through there few years bak and fell in love. Just driving along their main coastal highway is amazing experience.
This kind of process has been going on in Eastern Europe for many years. As soon as borders open, many working people emigrate for higher salaries to the west. Emigration will slow down, once local wages will increase. Cost of living is still low in Eastern Europe and if you can get good income it’s not too bad staying in your own country with your own people and culture than be immigrant in Germany. Just my thought
Italy is in the same boat as you and it’s the main reason I want to cry when thinking about this country. We’re in 59 millions now, but in 2050 we’ll be 45 mil by many prevision.
The saddest part is that even if I would really like to stay, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense because every aspect of the quality of life will get worse and worse due to lack of actual working age population, especially the specialized and smart ones
Romania: *looks at cards
“I’ll see your 10% and raise you 20%”
Hello from Croatia.
Croatia as a country is a paradise, if you dont belive me just google it. Problem is with a deep political coruption. Its it inbeded deep inside the politics and it wont go away soon.
Sons and doughters from politicians can get a job without any knowledge. But someone who worked hard can barley make a living.
In a nutshell that is way 10% population has left. I belive its even more but they dont want to admit.
but croatian government thought of something brilliant
they try to tax the earnings u made abroad even if u are deregistered from croatia and live abroad for years :DDDD
When our 2021 census data gets released, I expect similar results.
Went from Croatia to Finland.best decision ever. Paycheck went from 500 to 3000
Majority of those who counted the population just wrote down the numbers without checking, because it was in the middle of covid wave so everyone was scared to talk to people so the real number is surely more than 20%.
Reasons why young and smart left:
1. Majority of people in tourism work illegally, or reported on half time but working full time. Witch kills their pension and make everyone who works legally unprofitable.
2. Majority of crimes from high positions go unpunished.
3. People hates those little fees you have to pay, like when customs check your package you have to pay opening fee, like really why?
4. There are instances od double taxing, while double taxing is illegal there are grey places like renting tax.
5. If I’m drunk and crash into your car my insurance will offer 50%-70% of damage to you, if you want full damage reimbursement you must sue, witch is not cheap, and majority of people have to accept low ball offer.
6. We pay one of the most expensive garbage collection in Europe. And in the same time they are not recycled properly, and end up in the same landfill. Plus all that scandal with waste processing.
7. Normal person with above average paycheck of 800eur earns approximately 400000eur in their whole lifetime on earth, while one 60m2 app costs 200000euro. Food prices are the same as Ireland or Germany. Paying rent is around 400eur/month on lower end 50m2 apartments.
8. People are still living in the past and are stubborn
9. There is despair because you can easily identify the problem and solution to it but it’s next to impossible to change anything. I’m active and somewhat respected in my community and after numerous suggestions, projects etc I couldn’t even get the 300m2 pond cleaned up from garbage.
10. This one is maybe the most important one, you can work for 10years for a company with month contracts until they offer you better contracts, you can work 10 years more and aim for better position just so one friend from your directors can fill that position with no expirience and education. So you get bunch of unqualified people on leading positions and the company/community goes to hell slowly but surely. They employ 1old people close to pension and threatened them to work all kind of work without complaints. In a hotel you can’t be just electrician, you are a plumber, carpenter, audio video technician, room cleaning, engineering room maintenance etc all for the same pay like someone just doing one of those. Union is payed from companies pocket including bonuses so unions doesn’t work for employees but rather against them for better bonuses.
The costs of freedom of movement, people migrate from worse economies to better ones.
Pros: more skilled labour for wealthy countries (although will cause wage deflation for locals), less unemployment issues in low economy countries.
Cons: more stress on housing and services in high economy countries, low economy countries lose half a generation of the young and face local skills shortages.
I’ve always thought Hrvatska could be more of a remote working hotspot. I appreciate that’s probably not a vast number of people – but if they offered something akin to what Georgia, Thailand, Sri Lanka etc. do, targeted globally, I’m sure they could find space for around 100k people.
Smh we in Bulgaria are miles ahead of them 💪😤🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬
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Portugal: first time ?
If you live in one state that isn’t doing well, then it is perfectly normal to move to another state that has better opportunities. Europe, like the US, is a single entity. The Croatians did not die off because of malnutrition or anything they just went in search of opportunities to other states within the EU. In other words if we used the word Europeans, instead of Croatians, then there is nothing to talk about.
Meanwhile in their neighbourhood, Serbia lost 582 000 people on the population of 7mil. Only halted by covid which increased the difficulty of moving abroad for a job. It is so bad that we have the same (or greater by some estimates) number of people outside of our borders as we do inside.
Portugal 20%
I don’t know why people choose to ignore natality and don’t put all the factors in. In the past it was normal to have large family with many kids, while now that is not the case. Just look how many siblings people aged 70+ had… Family and kids used to be a priority and now not anymore.
Although everyone knows about demographic issues I dont think people really realise how BAD it (could) be for some EU countries.
Poland is projected to go from 38 to 24 million. Bulgaria from 9 in 1990 to 4.5 in 2100.
Ukraine went from 52 million in 1990 to (projected) 24 million in 2100.
Italy, Germany, Spain are all bad too but at least (most likely) these countries will just use immigration to prop it up. France and UK demographics are relatively ‘ok’ on their own.
Even Russia is only projected to lose 20m in the next 80 years, where as Japan is projected to lose 50!
Everyone of my friends and families in Croatia lives in a big ass house have cars etc, while I’m here in Munich slaving away for rent in a small flat and no car.
I would say the quality of live is just different. Yeah no yearly IPhone or newest lease car but man you guys have fucking housing.
I‘m not very familiar with the situation in croatia but when it comes to a comparison between USA and Europe please keep in mind that the standard of living in Middle-European countries is way higher than in the US. This starts with social insurances and ends with the highest food standards. Moreover, big tech companies like Facebook would never be able to operate in the same way in Europe as they do in the US when it comes to data privacy or hate-speech and so on…
I think the reason why so many young people leave countries like Croatia or Bulgaria is simply because there are thousands of job vacancies in Middle-Europe where the salary is much higher and the living standards are also better.
Oh hey, my country is in r/europe!!
… Oh no. Not like this.
It could be though , that it is one of the worst economies in the EU percisely because young people are leaving…. some kind of a self aggravating phenomenon
Man… do some changes in the laws (it appears that are part of the problem?) and I’ll gladly move to Croatia to work.
As an Swede I would love to be living in a warm place and work 100% remote.
I left 20 years ago and never looked back. Probably the best decision I have ever made in my life. The only thing that ties me with Croatia is my passport and going on holidays there every now and then. Still got family there tho and their lives have not improved by a bit since I left, even though they are working their asses off.
No economics expert but I wonder how Croatia will not totally collapse in the next 30 years. The politicians make worse life decisions than I do and that is an accomplishment. Croatia could be the Florida of Europe (no, not in regards to Florida man but) in regards of the main location where EU pensioners move to to enjoy their retirement. But no, our politicians raised taxes for pensioners so that it makes it unaffordable to go live there. There are also other options that could be undertaken but with the Croatia being, well, Croatia, things will not change by a bit any time soon.
Went from Croatia to Ireland. My wages went 6x up. Guys I actually have savings now. I’m an adult.
I think it’s a Balkan thing.
Probably it’s the same also for Italy
Oh just wait until Romania reviews it’s population numbers. The governments keep delaying that out of fear but I would be they lost about 15% if not 20%. I’m one of them.
expect macedonia to lose thrice that if it ever joins the EU 😀
Its getting even worse lately, fuck our politicians.
Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg, *”look, Croatia has a great economy, fantastic. Everyone wants our economy to be like Croatia’s”*.
Croatia’s economy has really stagnated compared to say the Baltic states. In **1995** their **GDP per capita** in current $ was **4.9k**, for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania it was **3.1k**, **2.3k** and **2.2k**. By **2008** it was **16.4k** compared to **18.2k**, **16.5k** and **14.9k**, so it underperformed them, but was still in the same spot via starting ahead. For **2020** it was **14.1k** compared to **23k**, **20.2k** and **17.7k**. They’ve had a decade and a half of brutal stagnation. (World Bank)
EU the biggest brain drain system in the world
Same happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina, may be even more. These Balkan countries are made for the 200-300 families who have control over everything and live like kings. For the rest of us life is hard and seems unfair. That’s why wee see such large exodus and stories about new war, but the truth is that in an decade there won’t be enough people to vage a war.
settle 200k ukranian refugees in slavonia…its similiar to ukraine interior,theyl feel right at home,in some 50 years their kids will learn the language and mix with native population
It’d be even worse without Bosnian Croats moving to Croatia.