“I constantly hear that companies are looking for people. But when I respond to a vacancy, whether it’s at the butcher or at the supermarket, I always get back that I don’t meet the profile.”
Jacqueline Menks (60) is long-term unemployed: she has been unable to find a job for more than two years, despite the tight labor market. She is partly rejected and can work 16 hours a week without too much stress, otherwise she will suffer physically.
Menks is not the only one who is unable to get a job. The number of long-term unemployed rose in the second quarter: from 69,000 last year to 90,000 this year. They have all been looking for work for more than a year, says the Central Bureau of Statistics. And that in a unprecedented tight labor market: for the first time in fifty years there are more vacancies than unemployed.
Mismatch in the labor market
“It mainly concerns older people with sometimes outdated skills, often low-skilled,” says Nora Neuteboom, senior economist at ABN Amro. “Older workers are not more likely to lose their jobs, but if they become unemployed, they are much more likely to become long-term unemployed. This is how they lose their skills.”
“I’m good with computers, I’ve been a head cashier: I had experience in all kinds of areas. And yet I don’t fit the profile,” says Jacqueline Menks:
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