Your Excellency, the time has come. The country is opening again, and not just like that. The Dutch economy grew last year by no less than 4.8 percent† The shrinkage of 3.8 percent in the infamous corona year 2020 turns out to be a joke. The same goes for unemployment figures. Statistics Netherlands figures show that the Netherlands has had 370,000 unemployed since December (the lowest number since 2003). More than 70 percent of the Dutch population between 15 and 75 years is currently in paid work.
While society reopens, Your Excellency, we will not only ask ourselves whether we can kiss each other again, but also how we can formulate an adequate answer to the resulting shortage on the labor market. The Netherlands currently has no fewer than 387,000 vacancies, or 105 vacancies per 100 unemployed. In the same vein, the new Labor market indicator of ABN Amro that more than 15 percent of the vacancies in the Netherlands are currently unfilled.
If you really want the Netherlands to open up, your Excellency, you need a clear assessment framework. A framework that will enable you not only to tackle the shortage in the labor market, but at the same time to implement reforms that improve the quality of existing work and the well-being of the population. Based on the existing literature and proposed solutions, the assessment framework consists of three components: short-term interventions, medium-term reforms and long-term investments.
In the short term you need to carry out pragmatic interventions. Labor migration outside the EU is on the table. For example, embrace proposals from D66 politicians In ‘t Veld and Groothuizen. In the vision piece For a new Asylum and Migration Pact in Europe they recognize the fact that the Netherlands and the EU are facing an aging population. They also make interesting proposals for tackling the shortage in the labor market. For example, they propose to enable circular migration routes for practical and medium-skilled workers from outside the EU. “If we offer migrant workers temporary work and a safe journey, they contribute to our prosperity with their talents, skills and commitment, and they can absorb part of this aging population.”
It remains a great mystery why the thousands of economic migrants in European migration centers cannot currently be used to build railways, to insulate houses and to pick fruit and vegetables. With common sense and by learning from the past, pragmatic solutions like this are possible, so that in the long run the Netherlands will not experience Japanese situations (also shrinkonomics mentioned) – a labor shortage due to a combination of an aging population, a birth deficit and a negative migration balance.
Of course, labor migration does not offer a structural solution to the shortage on the labor market, excellence. The Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) advised last year that in addition to promoting labor migration, the Dutch government should also encourage women and the elderly to work. The combination of various solutions is the only way to deal with the shortages, according to the NIDI report.
That is why you, Your Excellency, will have to tackle existing forms of exclusion from the labor market in the medium term and help structurally unemployed people find a job. It turns out that employers still too often exclude people over 50, people with disabilities and bicultural Dutch people from existing jobs. The current shortage in the labor market therefore offers the government a unique opportunity to take control. Make childcare free. Offer a hefty tax rebate or bonus to employers who offer jobs to marginalized groups.
In the long term, technological innovation will of course partly make up for the shortage on the labor market. You will have to help companies automate and robotize, Your Excellency. This allows them to remain productive with few hands. But don’t fall into the trap of technosolutionism, the blind faith that technological developments will automatically solve social issues. We are not short of robots, but of hands in nursing homes.
I hope that the assessment framework presented will help you tackle the shortage on the labor market with smart interventions. But remember, Your Excellency, the shortage also presents opportunities to lose useless jobs and invest in vital professions. To quote FNV vice president Zakaria Boufangacha: “If we see low-quality jobs that offer little added value, then we should choose to reduce it a bit.”
Long live the open society. Long live the working society.
Kiza Magendaneis a political scientist and writes a column here every other week.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 18, 2022