Netherlands - Labor Force Employment

This publication includes three-monthly averages on the employed and unemployed labour force from January 2000.The Labour Force Survey is a monthly survey among 30,000 persons in the Netherlands.

Revision (2015): The monthly unemployment press release is now based according to the ILO definition. This is part of a broader strategy to comply with international definitions as much as possible in order to increase the international comparability of statistics. According to the ILO definition, everyone with a paid job of at least 1 hour a week is included in the employed labour force.  Pupils and students with part-time jobs, for example, all belong to the employed labour force under this definition. The national definition of the labour force comprises only people who work or want to work for at least 12 hours a week.

Labour force (LF)
The labour force (15-75 years)  includes:
- persons who work at least 12 hours a week;
- persons who have accepted work for at least 12 hours a week;
- persons willing to work at least 12 hours a week, who are available and actively seeking work for at least 12 hours a week

Employed labour force- persons working at least 12 hours a week

Unemployed labour force- persons who have accepted work for at least 12 hours a week, or willing to work at least 12 hours a week, who are available and actively seeking work for at least 12 hours a week

Unemployment rate- unemployed labour force as a percentage of the total labour force

Participation rate- labour force (seasonally adjusted) as a percentage of the total population aged 15 until 75

Participation rate (net)- employed labour force (not seasonally adjusted) as a percentage of the total population aged 15 until 75

The monthly figures on the labour force are composed based on data from a sample survey, the Dutch Labour Force Survey (LFS). The Dutch LFS is a so-called rotating panel survey with five waves. Respondents are once interviewed  thoroughly by an interviewer of Statistics Netherlands. This takes place by means of a face-to-face interview (Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing, CAPI) or an interview by phone (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing, CATI). After that they are contacted by phone every three months for four more times. This survey method was introduced in the last quarter of 1999.

The weighting of the observations takes place in two steps. In the first step inclusion weights are assigned to the observations. These inclusion weights are calculated so that they can correct for uneven inclusion probabilities that follow from the applied sampling method. In the second step final weights are determined. With this step the bias caused by non-response is reduced. For this, information on sex, age, country of origin, official place of residence and some other regional classifications are used. Next to this, information from registrations on country of origin, registration at employment office and income is used. For the monthly figures all waves are weighted separately, which makes it possible to compute five separate series for the labour force. These series serve as input for the structural time series model.

Time series model
The size of the unemployed and the employed labour force in a certain month is connected to the size of the unemployed and employed labour force in previous months. Therefore it makes sense to improve the precision of the monthly estimates by using sample information from previous periods.  This information  is also used to determine the monthly seasonal effects. With this the monthly developments in the unemployment can also be judged without seasonal effects. The available information from the five waves is integrated by the time series model into one set of estimations for the labour force by age and sex.

The data is not subject to revisions; figures are final.

Though extensive, the Labour Force Survey is a sample survey and therefore subject to a certain margin of error. Only major or long-term alterations may lead to conclusions concerning employed and unemployment.