Three vocational jobs created for every expat recruited to Netherlands: fmr. Finance Min

Highly skilled and highly educated immigrants arriving in the Netherlands result in more employment opportunities for current residents, not fewer, EenVandaag reported after speaking with experts. Knowledge migrants are essential for the Dutch economy, added Jeroen Dijsselbloem. The former finance minister and current mayor of Eindhoven told Buitenhof about his recent conversations with tech company ASML. For every highly-educated immigrant the company brings to its Eindhoven Brainport home office, jobs are created for three people with vocational education, the mayor said.

Sandra Philippen, chief economist at ABN Amro, was more hesitant to put actual numbers to that statement. However, it is certain that knowledge migrants result in more jobs in the labor market. “They start working somewhere, they add a lot of value to the economy. That generates more activity. Subsequently, there is additional demand, and new jobs are created. Additional people are needed for these jobs.”

Immigration tied to job opportunities is a topic of concern for several large companies in the Netherlands. The parties currently negotiating to form the next Dutch Cabinet all want to limit immigration to the Netherlands, including highly-skilled workers, highly-educated people, migrant laborers, asylum seekers, and international students.

ASML has already threatened to expand abroad if it can’t keep recruiting international talent to the Netherlands. And dredging company Boskalis announced it was moving part of its head office to Abu Dhabi for the same reason. Due to widespread staff shortages, they can’t find the staff they need in the Netherlands.

Three University of Amsterdam professors wrote an opinion piece for FD earlier this month warning that several hot button topics and policy decisions "are shaking up the business community." The attitude towards foreign students and recruitment is unusually problematic, since it comes at a time when most sectors are struggling to fill their available positions, wrote Roel Beetsma, Marc Salomon and Henk Volberda.

On top of that, limiting the 30-percent tax benefit that allows some workers recruited abroad could exacerbate matters, as well as taxing companies buying back their shares and reducing tax benefits for investing in research and development. There is growing political support to roll back the proposed cut to the scheme, but that will not immediately restore confidence, they argued.

"Even if the announced measures ultimately turn out to be a false alarm, they have already done their destructive work. Business does not like unpredictability. That makes sense, because a decision to settle somewhere and invest there is made for a very long period of time," the professors wrote.

DNB president Klaas Knot also previously said that highly skilled immigrants add value to the Dutch economy and that the government should ensure that the Netherlands remains an attractive place for them to settle. When presenting the central bank’s annual figures earlier this month, Knot also warned that the Netherlands was running into the limits of its capacity.

“In the labor market, in the housing market, but also in our infrastructure: the power grid where demand is sometimes too high, and where supply is sometimes too high, our overcrowded motorways and trains during rush hour. Or environmental and climate limits: carbon emissions and nitrogen pollution.” He warned that the government would have to make hard choices because these scarcities cannot be solved everywhere at once.

Last month, the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) pointed out that more migrant workers and knowledge migrants will not solve the widespread staff shortages in the country. More migrant workers can alleviate shortages in some sectors, but they can’t work in all sectors due to the language barrier. Bringing more workers to the Netherlands also means more people spending money here, increasing the demand for goods and services. And that, in turn, means more workers are needed.