The Dutch labour market saw further tightening in the fourth quarter of 2022 while at the same time, the number of jobs continued to grow, in particular temporary contracts, self-employed persons and temporary employment, according to research from ING.

The number of flexible workers increased during the period, with a year-on-year increase of 64,000 employees in a flexible employment relationship. In particular, flexible workers with a ‘relatively high degree of certainty’ in their contracts, such as temporary contracts with a prospect of becoming permanent, reported an increase in Q4 2022, as did the number of self-employed persons without employees. Flexible workers include workers on temporary contracts, self-employed persons, on-call and stand-in workers.

There were 8,000 more jobs in the temporary employment sector in the fourth quarter of 2022 than in the previous quarter.

However, the number of on-call and stand-in workers decreased, while the number of temporary workers fell slightly. The group of flexible workers who made the transition from on-call or temporary worker to self-employed person did grow, from 9,000 in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 16,000 in the same quarter of 2022.

Meanwhile, the number of unfilled vacancies decreased slightly over the year to 442,000 at the end of December. Trade, business services and healthcare are the sectors with the most vacancies.