Oil company Shell will cut up to 9,000 jobs worldwide. Hundreds of jobs are disappearing at the largest construction company in the Netherlands, BAM; 850 jobs would be lost at Tata Steel in IJmuiden. And KLM must submit the reorganization plans to Minister Hoekstra no later than tomorrow. It is expected that many jobs will also disappear there.
This begs the question: is this a corona wave of redundancies and will unemployment rise quickly as a result?
‘Lots of time for reorganization’
“It is logical that companies are now announcing reorganisations,” says analyst Corné van Zeijl of asset manager Actiam. “Everyone has watched for a while how the corona crisis is developing. And now they see that it is not improving, that there is a second wave and companies must now respond to that.”
But unemployment will not immediately rise sharply due to these kinds of announcements, expects ABN Amro economist Nora Neuteboom. “Companies spend a lot of time for such a reorganization, Shell for example until the end of 2022. And often people who retire are not replaced first, employees leave voluntarily or they are retrained and get a new job.”
Not just because of corona
According to Ton Wilthagen, professor of the Labor Market at Tilburg University, the fact that large companies are shrinking is also a structural development that is not only caused by corona. “Due to digitization, automation and robotization, the largest employers in the Netherlands are all shrinking. Together with corona, this now produces a fairly toxic cocktail in terms of job losses.”
Unemployment has risen in the Netherlands since corona, but so far not very fast. In February it was 2.9 percent, in August 4.6 percent. “That is still a bit of a ‘natural’ level”, says Nora Neuteboom of ABN Amro. “And that’s really because of the wage subsidies from the NOW scheme. But large Dutch companies are now looking at how to adapt to the situation.”
She expects more reorganisations, especially in sectors that will not return to pre-corona levels any time soon. “Such as traveling, flying, events and catering. Companies are now going to say: we are throwing off this department, there is no work for these people. At the end of this year and especially next year, I expect to see further increases in unemployment as a result.”
–
