Dutch employers still struggling to find staff

Employers are still struggling to find staff. Although the number of vacancies is steadily declining, there are also fewer unemployed people to fill the vacancies. For every hundred unemployed people, there were 114 open vacancies in the last quarter of last year, according to Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reports.

This means that the shortage in the labor market is the same as in the third quarter of 2023. It is considered a shortage when there are over a hundred vacancies per hundred unemployed people. This has been the case since the end of 2021.

The shortage has not lessened because the amount of jobs has kept growing. Last quarter, 45,000 jobs were added, bringing the total to 11.6 million jobs. This means more than 73 percent of the population between 15 and 75 years old had jobs.

The number of jobs grew, especially in the catering, transport, construction, and care sectors. In the temporary employment sector, the number of jobs fell by 4,000.

A group employers can use to fill the rotas are part-time workers who want to work more. According to CBS, these so-called 'underutilized part-time workers' increased by 8,000 to 525,000 workers.