181,000 jobs cut at companies that received Covid support from gov't

The companies who received wage support from the government's coronavirus support package cut a total of 181 thousand jobs between February and June, a decrease of 6.9 percent of the jobs at these companies, Statistics Netherlands reported on Friday.

Job losses were greatest in the rental and other businesses sector, which includes employment agencies, at 12.2 percent. The hospitality and culture sector and sports and recreation sector also lost many jobs, at 10 percent each.

At companies that did not apply for wage support through the NOW regulation, which covers up to 90 percent of the wage costs for companies who lost turnover for three consecutive months due to the pandemic, the number of jobs increased by 0.3 percent.

According to the stats office, the NOW regulation subsidized the wages of 2.6 million of the total 8.5 million employees in the Netherlands from March to July. The hospitality industry made most use of this regulation, with NOW subsidies helping to pay for 85 percent of the salaries in this sector. Sports and recreation made second most use of this support at 76 percent, followed by rental and other business services at 57 percent.

Smaller companies made slightly more use of the NOW regulation than larger ones. NOW subsidies helped pay for the salaries of 46 percent of workers at companies with 10 to 50 employees, and 41 percent of workers at companies with 50 to 100 employees.

The NOW regulation was set up in a way to prevent layoffs as much as possible. According to the stats office, jobs that were lost at companies who received this support were mainly temporary contracts that were not renewed, and on-call jobs in which no hours were worked.