Dutch labor market growing tighter; 123 vacancies per 100 unemployed in 4th quarter

After slightly easing in the third quarter, the Dutch labor market grew tighter again in the last quarter of 2022. Unemployment decreased while the number of jobs continued to grow. There were 123 vacancies for every 100 unemployed people in the fourth quarter of last year, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported on Tuesday.

The number of vacancies decreased, but not as much as the unemployed. At the end of December, there were 442,000 unfilled vacancies in the Netherlands, 7,000 less than at the end of the third quarter. It was the second consecutive decline after eight quarters in which vacancies increased.

As in previous quarters, the most vacancies were in trade (89,000), business services (73,000), and healthcare (64,000). “Together, these three industries accounted for half of all open vacancies,” CBS said.

A total of 359,000 people were unemployed in the fourth quarter, 13 thousand less than the previous quarter. That brought unemployment to 3.6 percent of the working population, compared to 3.7 percent in the third quarter. Youth unemployment was still much higher than the average at 7.7 percent. Unemployment in the age group 25 to 45 was 2.9 percent, and 2.5 percent among 45 to 75-year-olds.

CBS considers someone unemployed when they have no paid work, are actively looking for a job, and are available to start immediately. The number of people in long-term unemployment, who have been unemployed for a year or more, dropped from 73,000 in the third quarter to 67,000 in the fourth quarter of 2022. “Long-term unemployment has fallen almost continuously after 2020,” CBS said.

The number of jobs increased by 85,000 to 11,545,000 in the fourth quarter, an increase of 0.7 percent. Over the whole of 2022, the Netherlands got 441,000 more jobs. The number of jobs increased by nearly a million - 956,000 - since the third quarter of 2020, CBS said. These figures include employee jobs and self-employed jobs, both full-time and part-time.