Croatia has doubled knowledge jobs

Since 2014, the share of adults employed in highly knowledge intensive jobs has more than doubled in Croatia. This is the finding of the geography of Europe’s brain business jobs index, produced by the European Centre for Entrepreneurship and Policy Reform (ECEPR), with support from Nordic Capital.

In 2026, 7.5 percent of the working-age adults of Croatia are estimated to be employed in brain business jobs, a term for employment in knowledge intensive firms in tech, information and communications technology, advanced services, and creative professions. This is a significant growth from 6.6 percent in 2024. The level has increased from 3.7 percent in 2014.

Between 2014 and 2026, the share of adults employed in brain business jobs has more than doubled in Cyprus, Portugal and Croatia. The rate of growth has been 102 percent in Croatia, 110 percent in Portugal, and 159 percent in Cyprus.

As comparison, the growth rate for the larger European economies has since 2014 been 54 percent in Spain, 48 percent in Italy, 20 percent in Germany, and 18 percent in France.

In the Zagreb region as many as 19.5 percent of the adults are employed in brain business jobs, this is the 6th highest share in a regional comparison, with all European regions that data exists for. Zagreb is increasingly one of Europe’s most brain business jobs dense regions.

“Croatia in general and the Zagreb region in particular are increasingly competitive when it comes to attracting knowledge intensive jobs, this reflect attractive tax and regulatory policies combined with strong talent supply. Increasingly it is the smaller countries in Europe, many in Central and Southern Europe, that are creating the best conditions for having a large share of their populations employed in highly knowledge intensive jobs. Further growth-oriented reforms of taxation and business regulation, can create opportunity for continuing to be attractive for growth of knowledge intensive jobs”, says Nima Sanandaji, CEO of ECEPR.

Nima Sanandaji (Photo: Press)

Klas Tikkanen, COO of Nordic Capital Advisors, explains the importance of combining high-quality education with favorable tax and regulatory environments, stating, “We find that having many engineers and scientists in the population is closely linked to the share of advanced jobs. We also continue to see a trend in Europe where countries with the fastest growth in brain business jobs tend to have lower tax levels relative to GDP. Combining talent supply with a competitive tax burden, is the recipe for nations to grow with knowledge-intensive jobs.”

Klas Tikkanen (Photo: Press)

Fostering high-value-creating jobs remains important for the regional labor markets of Europe. Each percentage point higher share of the population of European regions employed in brain business jobs is linked to 0.18 percentage points lower regional unemployment. This means that in a region where 10 percentage points more of the population is employed in brain business jobs, the average unemployment is 1.8 percent lower, compared to the typical European region.

Strong in telecommunications

Croatia has particular relative strengths in telecommunications, where 11 450 are employed. The country has  developed a relatively strong engineering & architecture sector, with 36 300 employees.