What fewer people live than in Utrecht, but much more than the number of inhabitants of Eindhoven – so many migrants could have a paid job, while they don’t have it yet. The so -called unused labor potential among migrants in the Netherlands is 331,000 people.
This is what the Migration Advisory Council, an important cabinet advisor, has calculated in a report published on Thursday. “As a result, the migrant himself lacks a connection with society and it is also detrimental to employers who have a shortage of staff, while the Dutch treasury is missing out on income,” says chairman of the Monique Kremer advisory board. Migrants pay taxes with a paid job.
In numbers, the unused talent is greatest among migrants from Turkey (around 50,000 people), Morocco (idem) and to a lesser extent Syria (around 30,000). Relatively, the waste of talent is greatest among Syrian migrants, more than half of whom are unnecessarily aside. For Syrians under the age of 45, that is even more than three in five.
In the analysis, the Advisory Board compared the labor market position of migrants with that of Dutch without a migration background-with the same sex and in the same age group. In addition, people are considered migrants if they are not born in the Netherlands, just like their parents. This concerns labor migrants, asylum seekers, knowledge workers from outside the EU and people who came to the Netherlands through family reunification.
Of the 1.7 million migrants aged 25 to 65, almost 68 percent had paid work in 2022. For the Dutch without a migration background, this was almost 86 percent. The difference between the groups is the unused labor potential.
Seen in this way, almost one in five migrants is unnecessary aside. This is considerably more often the case with women (more than 23 percent) than in men (more than 15 percent). “Women who come to the Netherlands to join their partner are often not in the picture with authorities,” says Kremer.
The biggest backlog lies with the warizers (three of the five works not) and the asylum migrants (two out of five). With the Ukrainian displaced, the latter group accounts for almost half of the waste of talent. Among people who came to the Netherlands as a labor migrant, this waste is rare.
Dutch language
A better knowledge of the Dutch language would help migrants find a job, the researchers write in the report. Especially with family and asylum migrants, the waste of talent would “decrease greatly if they speak perfect Dutch”. That is why the Advisory Board recommends investing heavily in Dutch language courses for migrants.
That is indeed urgently necessary, says political scientist Fatih Aktaş. He conducts research into the (labor) participation of migrants at the Hoge School Utrecht and OpenEMBassy, a knowledge center about newcomers. “You hardly get any lessons in the Dutch language in asylum seekers’ centers,” says Aktaş, who himself came to the Netherlands as a refugee from Turkey. Only with a residence status can an asylum migrant follow a language course. “The quality of those courses differs greatly per municipality and is often too low,” says Aktaş.
In follow -up studies, the advisory board wants to elaborate on possible causes. “We will look at three elements,” says member of the Paul de Beer advisory board. “To the employee, who, for example, does not sufficiently control the language and discriminates against the employer who may discriminate in the recruitment and selection. In addition, we investigate the mismatch in how employer and employee try to find each other, because they both only look for their own network.”
Diplomas
As soon as migrants are looking for work, they notice that the diplomas obtained in their country of origin make little impression on potential employers. Despite the staff shortage, they are strongly attached to diplomas from Dutch educational institutions, even if the foreign CV of the migrant is full of academic titles. The more migrants have completed a Dutch training, the smaller the waste of talent, the advisory council notes dryly.
“About three hundred Turkish academics have come to the Netherlands in recent years, a hundred of whom have been promoted,” says Aktaş. That happened after the failed coup in 2016 and the hunt that President Erdogan subsequently opened on (alleged) accomplices and sympathizers of the coup plants. “These academics are often unable to find a job at their level,” says Aktaş. As an example he mentions a known cardiologist who is now acting in cars and has therefore exchanged the anatomy of man for the anatomy of the car. “
According to Aktaş, countries such as Germany and Belgium develop much more than the Netherlands initiatives to help healthcare providers from abroad with additional training. “The UMC Groningen is now also working on that for a year or two, but that is late and little”. All those obstacles are frustrating, he says: “Because as a refugee you want to repay Dutch society as quickly as possible by working and paying taxes.”