Understanding the process of depopulation with the data

About the project

The Infostud group has been following the analytics and trends in advertising on the Poslovi.infostud.com and Startuj.infostud.com (website Najstudent.com, rebranded in 2021) websites for many years. By analyzing the data collected in the period from 2013 to 2020, we tried to contribute to the understanding of the process of depopulation of the working age population of Republic of Serbia. Below, you can read the results of the project made within the “Depopulation data challenge”, in which the project of the InfostudData team was declared as one of the winners. The project was implemented with the financial support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Serbia, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
Our focus was on job postings abroad. We analyzed the candidates’ interest in reviewing and applying for foreign jobs through our portal. In the process of data analysis, we first carried out the exploratory data analysis (EDA), and then linear regression (ML) and basic text analysis of foreign job postings. In addition to the analysis of data from the Poslovi.infostud.com portal, the exploratory analysis (EDA) was also performed on data from the Startuj.infostud.com (Najstudent.com) database, as a relevant representative sample of the younger part of the educated population.
In order to validate the obtained results, we also analyzed data available from other sources. The first validation is related to the internal database, which contains data collected through a special survey on the Poslovi.infostud.com website (hereinafter TK database), within which the candidates have stated whether they want to continue their life abroad for many years. The second validation refers to the analysis of data from the 2011 census, which was conducted by the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia.
Before you read the report in detail, it is important to note that all the conclusions we have reached reflect the intention of a certain part of the population to continue living abroad. As we do not know who did get a job abroad, we cannot say with certainty that applying for jobs abroad represents guaranteed emigration. Although the data we obtained depict a clear intention of the mentioned population to find a job in one of the foreign countries, we would like to distance ourselves from the conclusions related to the process of leaving the country. The results obtained in this research serve exclusively for research purposes, as a supplement to clarifying the problem that is the subject of the research.
Also, we will subsequently supplement this page with the results of a survey, which we will conduct on Poslovi.infostud.com and Startuj.infostud.com (Najstudent.com) websites. Our goal is to question our visitors about their intention and motivation to go abroad.