Unemployment down for 5th straight month

Unemployment in the Netherlands dropped for the fifth consecutive month last September, the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) has reported.

The bureau said in a statement today that the number of jobless people was cut by 4,000 in comparison to August; unemployed numbers were slashed by an average of 10,000 people per month in the past three months. “In the first quarter of this year, the capable workforce decreased by an average of 18,000 people per month because people lost their jobs,” CBS said, noting growth in recent months: “Eight percent of the workforce was without a job in September.

It said that at least 60,000 people got jobs in the past five months; mostly men (37,000) were able to get jobs. Nonetheless there are more women active in the job market; the number of women who have a job increased faster than the number who lost their jobs. CBS said that unemployed benefits that were paid out also saw a drop of 2.4 percent to 420,000 people. Last year September benefits remained the same as August 2013. There were also more benefits terminated this year than last year; CBS said the UWV stopped paying benefits to 463,000 people so far this year, 18.7 percent more than 2013. Of the terminations, 228,000 were stopped because people found new jobs, 20.3 percent more than last year. In fact, CBS said, the number of benefits that were terminated outweighed the number of new applications for benefits. CBS said that according to the definitions of the International Labor Organization (ILO), the Netherlands scored relatively well when it concerns unemployment numbers. “As per the definitions of ILO unemployment was at 6.5 of the workforce in September and 6.6 percent in September. That is relatively low, because in the Eurozone that percentage stood at 11.5 percent. In the entire EU it was 10.1 percent,” CBS said.