Netherlands unemployment recovery slows

The recovery of the labor market in the Netherlands is slowing down as compared to last year, figures published by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) show. The number of jobs increased, on balance, by six thousand to 9.8 million. In the last quarter of 2014, 40 thousand new jobs were created. The numbers were released by CBS on the same day as the announcement that the Dutch economy grew for the fourth consecutive quarter. Young people found more jobs on average. Long-term unemployment among people over 45 rose slightly. The unemployment rate fell compared with the previous quarter by two thousand to 635 thousand. This constitutes 7.1 percent of the Dutch workforce. Although the number of jobs increased slightly in the last quarter, the overall amount of work dropped. The Dutch population worked a total of 3.1 billion hours in the first quarter of 2015, which is a comparative decline of 0.6 percent. The number of jobs of the self-employed increased in the first quarter by six thousand and stands at the level of 2.1 million. This is 175 thousand more than six years ago. One in five jobs is now independent work. In the last nine quarters, there were 200,000 jobs lost, putting the overall number of jobs below the level of late 2011. A substantially larger job creation in the last quarter of 2014 is largely explained through a high number of seasonal jobs promoted by Christmas period.