The total number of employed persons increased by 38 thousand in the second quarter of 2016. The number of jobs for temporary workers increased sharply. The number of self-employed rose just slightly. In addition, the number of vacancies increased by 5 thousand, and the number of unemployed decreased by 16 thousand. Unemployment fell from 6.5 to 6.3 percent—reported CBS.
In the second quarter of 2016 there were on average 9,976 thousand jobs. It has now been nine consecutive quarters of job growth there. From the first quarter of 2014 it added a total of nearly 230 thousand jobs.
During the past quarter the number of jobs increased by 45 thousand, while the number of jobs of self-employed workers declined by 7 thousand. There are now more than 2 million self-employed, or one in five jobs.
The growing number of jobs is mainly by temporary workers. By the employment agencies the number of jobs increased by 30 thousand in the past quarter and in one year, the number of jobs by 10 percent. Also in the trade and catering, employment is picking up. By contrast, the number of jobs in health care fell last quarter by 6 thousand. The last four years the number of jobs declined in health care by a total of over 80 thousand (less 5%).
Employed people worked in the second quarter, a total of 3.2 billion hours. That is seasonally adjusted and is over 1% more than the previous quarter. The average is 28 hours a week at work.
End of June, there were 155 thousand job openings in the Netherlands. That is an increase of 5 thousand compared to the previous quarter. The number of vacancies is rising for twelve consecutive quarters. In total, during this period there are 64 thousand vacancies, which is an average of 5 thousand per quarter. The number of vacancies has not been this high since the period 2006–2008. Nevertheless, the number of vacancies is still nearly 100 thousand lower than the record high in 2008.
In industry, the number of jobs did not change much between late March and late June. The largest increase was measured in trade (+1 thousand) and the largest decrease in finance (-0.4 thousand). Despite a number of bankruptcies in trade, the number of vacancies in this industry is still rising. With nearly a fifth of all jobs, the trade industryis with the most vacancies.
The most job openings can be found in information and communication. In this industry, there are now 50 job openings per thousand jobs offered. In education, there are the least jobs: 11 per thousand jobs.
The labour market is doing well. In 2008 the number of vacancies and the number of unemployed almost balanced with each other. There was talk of a tight labour market. The financial crisis decreased the number of vacancies and as a consequence the number of unemployed rose sharply. By the end of 2013, there were eventually more than seven times as many jobs as unemployed. Since then, slowly, the ratio is declining. In mid-2016 there was an average of 3.6 unemployed per vacancy.
Source: https://www.cbs.nl