Record 76,000 businesses quit in first half of this year

Some 76,000 businesses in the Netherlands closed down in the first half of 2022. That is the highest number of quitters since Statistics Netherlands (CBS) started keeping track in 2007. The number of bankruptcies increased slightly compared to the first half of 2021 but is still historically low, CBS said on Thursday.

In the first half of 2021, almost 52,000 companies closed down. This year, the closures amounted to 3.6 percent of the total number of companies in the Netherlands, the same as in 2020 and slightly lower than last year’s 2.7 percent.

Of all the company closures in the first half of this year, 84 percent involved a company with one employed person. That is 64,000 sole proprietorships that closed down in the first six months of 2022, compared to almost 44,000 in the same period last year. Just over 12,000 companies with two or more employees closed down, compared to 8 thousand last year.

An especially high 65,785 online stores closed down in the first half of 2022. There were also many management consultancy firms (over 5,000) and financial holdings (over 3,000) that closed their doors.

Three-quarters of companies that closed were active for less than ten years. Over a third were active for three years or less.