NL residents with paid work back to pre-pandemic levels

In February, around 9 million people in the Netherlands had paid work - about the same number as in early 2020, before the coronavirus pandemic hit the country, Statistics Netherlands reported on Thursday. 3.6 percent of the working population were unemployed last month, the same as in January.

Before the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis in March 2020, the Netherlands' labor force had increased by nearly 900 thousand people over the course of six years. Between March and May 2020, that number fell by 184 thousand workers. After that it started to increase again, reaching pre-crisis levels in February.

Last month, 4.1 million people aged 15 to 75 were out of paid work for a variety of reasons. 340 thousand of them were unemployed - they had no paid work, were actively looking for work, and were available to start working immediately. That amounts to 3.6 percent of the working population being unemployed - the same as in January.

Unemployment in the Netherlands increased from 2.9 percent in March 2020 to 4.6 percent in August. After that, this percentage decreased monthly up to and including January.

At the end of February, benefits agency UWV paid out 286 thousand active unemployment benefits - a decrease of 2,500 or -0,9 percent compared to the month before.