In the third quarter of this year (July, August, September) the number of vacancies grew and unemployment fell further. And that led to even greater tension in the labor market, reports the Central Bureau of Statistics. There were 126 vacancies for every 100 unemployed. Never before have there been so many vacancies compared to the number of unemployed.
A quarter earlier, the ratio was still 106 vacancies to 100 unemployed. “The shortage on the labor market was already high, but the record of a quarter earlier has now been shattered,” says Peter Hein van Mulligen, chief economist at CBS.
At the end of September, there was a record number of 371,000 unfilled vacancies. At the end of June, there were still 327,000. Of the various sectors, there were the most vacancies in trade. This is followed by business services, healthcare and the catering industry. “You now see the growing pains of the corona recovery. Companies let people go when corona started and are now struggling to find people again,” said Van Mulligen.
11 million jobs
Meanwhile, the number of employee and self-employed jobs has risen to just over 11 million. That is the highest number of jobs in the Netherlands ever. The previous record, 10.9 million, was reached in the first quarter of 2020, just before the start of the corona crisis.
Unemployment fell to 3.1 percent of the labor force. This is slightly higher than before the corona crisis, when 3 percent of the working population was unemployed.
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