This is apparent from an analysis by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), which for the first time has looked specifically at employees in the catering industry for this period. Statistics Netherlands only has data on staff who were employed as employees: temporary workers and the self-employed are not included.
No income
At the beginning of January 2020, before the corona crisis, there were 395,000 employees in the catering industry. More than half of them, 203,000, were under the age of 25. Nearly one in three of this group of young people no longer had a job as an employee a year later, not even in a sector other than the catering industry. “The blow of the corona crisis has definitely hit young people the hardest,” says Peter Hein van Mulligen, chief economist at CBS. “Many of them lost their jobs and with it their income. That effect is much less noticeable among the over 25s.”
The corona crisis with all the lockdowns hit the catering industry hard. More than 100,000 jobs were lost in the first year. There were government schemes such as NOW to maintain employment in the sectors that were forced to close, but that money was mainly used to keep people with permanent contracts in service. Young people up to 25 more often work as on-call workers or have a temporary contract. They therefore lost their jobs much more often.
In January 2021 there were only 289,000 employees in the hospitality industry. Employment in the sector has now picked up somewhat, but still not at pre-pandemic levels.
Sidejob
For most under 25s, their work in the hospitality industry is a side job: two out of three also follow education. One in three of these co-workers was no longer employed as an employee a year later. Some of them had found another source of income: such as self-employment. But a good half of the pupils and students who were still earning money in the catering industry at the beginning of 2020, had no income a year later. Young people who did not go to school or higher education and who had lost their job in the catering industry were more likely to fall back on benefits.
In 2021, the GGD’s vaccination campaign picked up steam and employment picked up again, Van Mulligen looks back. “Many young people who previously worked in the catering industry found better paid jobs at the GGD. Now that that is being scaled back, some may return to the catering industry, but not all of them.”