The focus of this paper is determined by examining the role of the Employment Expectations Indicator (EEI) in human resource planning. EEI is a numerical indicator of managers' predictions about the number of employees in the next three months in four sectors of the national economy, derived from the results of the Business and Consumer Survey (BCS). The goal of the research is to examine the connection between EEI and changes in the number of employees on the Croatian labour market in order to use this relatively new, methodologically specific indicator in human resource planning. The results of the empirical research conducted in this paper showed that the EEI and the growth rate of the number of employees (on an annual level) for Croatia have very similar development dynamics in the observed period from January 2020 to April 2023. With the beginning of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in March or April 2020, it was observed that the EEI preceded the growth rate of the number of employees by two months. A similar relationship continued throughout the analyzed period. Acknowledging the predictive properties of the EEI and the fact that the results of the BCS are available to the public much more widely than the data of official statistics, the EEI has an important role in human resource planning, especially in periods of unstable economic activity. In addition, EEI, in contrast to the data of official statistics, does not quantify the level and dynamics of the number of employees on the labor market, but rather measures the perceptions and expectations of managers about this variable.