Unemployment Benefits in The Netherlands

The Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics presented today the statistical data on the Unemployment Benefits for September, 2011 (link in Dutch).

This gave me a good opportunity to dive deeper into their wonderful Statline database and dig up Unemployment Benefit data over a much longer period.

Please check out the charts; all data courtesy of www.cbs.nl

All data in this chart courtesy of www.cbs.nl
Click to enlarge

  

What strikes me in this chart is the correlation between the economic circumstances and the spreads in numbers of UB’s between men and women. Bad economic times mean large spreads, while good economic times mean small spreads.

All data in this chart courtesy of www.cbs.nl
Click to enlarge

 One of the causes for this phenomena seems to be that men are fired in much larger quantities at economic downturns, while the rate of women that are fired stays fairly equal.

All data in this chart courtesy of www.cbs.nl
Click to enlarge

While the inflow for men is much bigger at economic downturns, the outflow of men because of a job, is also much bigger when better days arrive. Especially from March- May and during November massive amounts of men find a job. This has probably to do with the demand for people in the manufacturing and the building industry that is significantly higher during these months.

All data in this chart courtesy of www.cbs.nl
Click to enlarge

Although the spreads in inflow and outflow in the Unemployment Benefits between men and women differ very much, until 2009 there was virtually no difference between the numbers of men and women that left the UB without a job. That changed between 2009-2010; this chart shows clearly that much more men stopped receiving UB without a job, then women during this period.  This must be caused by the Dutch comeuppance of the credit crisis. This difference disappeared again after March 2010, with a clear exception in March 2011.

It is hard to draw conclusions from these charts about the current economy. Looking at the current spreads between men and women in numbers of Unemployment Benefits, you would say that we are in better economic times now. However, this seems contrary to other economic indicators that all point out to a sturdy recession in 2012. In about twelve months, we will know much more.