230,000 jobs, 5,300 businesses saved by gov't Covid support: Rabobank

A massive 230 thousand job losses and 5,300 bankruptcies were prevented during the coronavirus pandemic, Rabobank calculated. This is largely due to the government's coronavirus support measures, NOS reports.

Many employees were not laid off when work decreased during the lockdowns, because the government offered wage subsidies through the NOW regulation. For self-employed, the pandemic resulted in a decrease in work and fewer worked hours. For them there was the TOZO scheme to supplement their income and keep them afloat.

"Economists assume certain laws," Hugo Erken of Rabobank said. Historically, if the economy shrinks by 1 percent, unemployment will increase by a certain percentage. "If you compare that expectation with reality, there is a big gap. You have to give the cabinet credit for that."

These support measures had a hefty price tag, with the State paying out some 20 billion euros in advances through the NOW regulation alone. It is expected that a large part of this will be repaid in the coming years. "If nothing was done, the damage may have been much larger," Erken said. "Then confidence would have been hit people would have started spending less, perhaps a large part of the vital company infrastructure would have collapsed."

That would have resulted in the Dutch economy taking much longer to recover. Rabobank expects that the economy will return to pre-pandemic levels in the third quarter of this year.