Thanks to a new measurement method, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) has identified significantly more unemployed people in the Netherlands. In November there were still 251,000 unemployed according to the old method, in December the number is 369,000 in the new method.
The fact that the number is higher is only partly due to the fact that more people in the construction, agriculture and catering sectors became unemployed in December.
By far the most important cause is a European regulation that requires countries to measure unemployment in the same way. This is done through surveys, via the Internet, in person and by telephone. Every week, 3000 Dutch people receive questions about their work from CBS.
More often ‘yes’
The questions in that survey have been adjusted because of those European rules. The main adjustment is the question of how quickly someone who is unemployed can get back to work. Previously, that was a question with more options and more people answered that they could not start in two weeks. Then they do not count as unemployed according to the official definition.
Now people are specifically asked whether people can start working within two weeks. “That seems like a small difference, but more people say ‘yes’ to that,” says Martijn Souren, process manager of the labor force survey at Statistics Netherlands. “Then they count as unemployed.”
According to Souren, it indicates that work and unemployment are difficult to measure precisely. “Life is not as simple as it sometimes seems from the outside. You have benefits and all kinds of other ways to measure whether people are working or not, but it is especially important that you can compare it internationally. Every country has different legislation regarding benefits, so those figures are very difficult to compare, which is why these kinds of surveys are necessary.”
Also more workers
The percentage of the labor force that is unemployed is 3.8 percent. In the old method this would have been 2.8 percent. Historically, unemployment in the Netherlands is still low. The Netherlands is in fifth place in the list of EU countries with the lowest unemployment rate.
In addition to the definition of the unemployed – whereby people who have 1 hour of work no longer count – Statistics Netherlands also keeps figures on the unused labor potential. This includes people who are not available for a new job in the short term or people who do have a job but want to work more. According to the old measuring method, this included about a million people. New figures have not been published.
The number of employed persons is also higher, according to the new census. This is because paid internships also count as work. In December there were almost 9.4 million people in work, compared to 9.2 million in the old method.
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