For Germany and the Netherlands, which respectively make up the third and fourth largest staffing market in Europe according to Staffing Industry Analysts’ research, employment and unemployment figures have been published which give a good indication of how the market might the develop in the future. In Germany the situation seems brighter, while the Dutch labour market appears to be under more pressure.

In Germany, the number of people employment in the last quarter amounted to 41.6 million, according to provisional results provided by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), this is the highest level of employment in over 20 years. The number of employed people exceeded that of the previous year by 560,000 or +1.4%.

The service sectors accounted for nearly two thirds of the employment increase. However, as elsewhere in Europe, there was a slight decrease in employment in financial and insurance sectors (–2,000 persons or –0.2%). The total number of hours worked also went up by +0.5% to around 14.9 billion hours compared with the fourth quarter of 2010.

In the Netherlands,  unemployment has risen in January to 6%, up 22,000 from the previous month, with especially young people now being on job seekers’ allowance. Newspapers in the country have reported a “crisis felt in the labour market” and the Dutch recruitment firm Randstad, the second largest, has yesterday reported a net loss of €16.5 million in 2011.

Earlier this week it was also reported that the Dutch economy shrank by -0.7% from a year earlier, which analysts believe to be a serious decline. Some have even gone as far as to say the Netherlands was in a recession and that “there are no signs that growth will recover,” according to the economist Maarten Leen who works at the global bank ING. He further commented that unemployment is likely to continue to rise this year so prospect for the Dutch market should remain cautious.