The tension on the labor market is far from over and the jobs are there to be won. Yet there are currently 1.2 million people in our country who are partially or completely marginalized. Nearly half are part-time workers, and that group has increased further in the recent quarter.
The Netherlands is not called the European champion of part-time work for nothing. Many employees choose to work three or four days a week. The number of underutilized part-time workers who want to work longer hours and are immediately available for it even increased by 27,000 to 521,000 in the last quarter.
“This is a strange development,” says chief economist Peter Hein van Mulligen of Statistics Netherlands. He doesn’t have an exact explanation for the increase, but he says the unused job potential as a whole moves together with unemployment, which rose by 45,000 in the last quarter to 372,000.
According to Rob Witjes, a job market expert at benefits agency UWV, there is mostly a mismatch between preferences. “Part-time workers include many young people and students. They work mainly in retail or logistics and are currently in a strong position due to a shortage in the labor market.”
“Part-timers want to work more hours, but they have a lot more requirements on what days or times. And that creates a tense field with the employer.”
Most companies in these industries assume optimal flexibility. It is not for nothing that shops and supermarkets, for example, are looking for people for shopping evenings or other hectic moments. And that could be one explanation for the rise in the number of part-timers, Witjes says.
‘More vacancies from eight to sixteen hours’
“We are therefore seeing more and more eight or sixteen hour vacancies. Employers often post such vacancies to complement their lists instead of dividing the hours between current staff. This is quite the conundrum.”
Companies can also target people who are already employed. “But these employees then indicate, for example, that working on a shopping night or on a Saturday or Sunday doesn’t suit them,” says Witjes. “So an employer would rather look for someone who is willing to work those days or parts of the day.”
