Businesses trying to hire employees in Amsterdam have a particularly challenging labor market because there are far more open positions than there are people looking for a job. The employment market in the Dutch capital is more competitive than everywhere else in the Netherlands the UWV said.
According to the UWV, there will be three times as many jobs in and around Amsterdam by the middle of 2022 than there were in 2016, when the UWV similarly characterized the Dutch labor market as tight. The jobs are dispersed among several various industries and sectors, with the management, linguistic, and creative fields having the fewest openings.
Despite the high number of open vacancies available, the unemployment rate remains high in the Amsterdam area. 90,500 residents of the area are officially recognised as “looking for job” because they receive unemployment benefits.
The UWV observes that the high vacancy rate is insufficient to balance the high unemployment rate, a large portion of those who have registered as unemployed are unable to fill open positions because they are already engaged in a training program, taking care of their family, or are physically unable to work.
The UWV estimates that just about 25.000 potential employees exist in the region, leaving the remaining 35.000 positions empty. The UWV anticipates that the current labor crisis will persist in a number of sectors in the coming year, despite predictions that the number of open positions in the Netherlands will fall by 7% in 2023.
