At 7:30, a small contractor opens the order book beside an unpaid invoice. One experienced worker left in May. Another is covering two sites. The vacancy has drawn plenty of reactions, yet few suitable candidates. The owner can accept the next project, but only if the team can deliver it without running on overtime.
Falling unemployment sounds encouraging. At the office, however, the practical question is different: can the company supply the next job with reliable hours, suitable skills and enough cash to carry payroll?
CBS reported 393,000 unemployed people in June 2026, equal to 3.8 percent of the labour force. Over the previous three months, unemployment fell by an average of 5,000 people a month. Paid employment also fell by 6,000 a month, while the number of people outside the labour force rose by 8,000 a month.
The Dutch labour market is cooling. Suitable labour has not suddenly become abundant.
Fewer unemployed, fewer working
Unemployment counts people who are actively seeking work and available to start. The wider labour flows give employers a more useful picture. Over three months, 149,000 unemployed people found work. Another 100,000 stopped searching or left the labour force. Meanwhile, 123,000 workers lost work and 112,000 people entered the market looking for a job.
This is a quieter market, rather than an easy one. Some employers may receive more applications or face less frantic competition for certain roles. Others will still struggle with location, working hours, trade skills, physical demands or pay expectations.
A national number cannot tell a restaurant whether it can staff Saturday evening. Nor can it tell a technical firm whether it can find an experienced mechanic. Those decisions remain local, role-specific and tied to the hours when customers need the work done.
CBS counted 378,000 open vacancies at the end of the first quarter, equal to 91 vacancies for every 100 unemployed people. Vacancies have declined in almost every quarter since the third quarter of 2022. Construction still had the highest vacancy rate, at 74 vacancies per 1,000 employee jobs. Care, trade and business services together held more than half of all vacancies.
Headcount hides the real shortage
For a small company, capacity is rarely the same as headcount. The relevant measure is dependable time for customer work, supervision, planning, administration and recovery when something goes wrong.
One absent colleague can remove a large share of a team’s productive time. CBS recorded sickness absence of 2.8 percent at firms with fewer than ten employees in the first quarter of 2026, up from 2.6 percent a year earlier. The percentage may look modest. In a team of six, a long absence is anything but modest.
Recruitment carries its own cost. A new employee brings salary, holiday pay, employer charges, training and management time before reaching full productivity. A rushed hire can cost more than leaving a role open for another month. Leave it open too long, and the owner may carry the work while invoices wait.
The contractor from breakfast needs a more exact question. Is the company short of a person, or short of a specific skill during specific hours? Can the work be planned differently? Are prices high enough to carry another employee? Will customers pay soon enough to cover payroll while that employee learns the role?
The answers sit in the roster, order book and debtor ledger, not in the unemployment rate.
Cooling does not mean cheaper
Easier recruitment in some roles does not mean lower labour costs. The latest CBS figures available in July showed collectively agreed hourly wages, including special payments, were 4.2 percent higher in June than a year earlier. Contractual labour costs were 4.1 percent higher.
Those figures will not match every payroll. They do explain why waiting for a softer labour market is not a cost strategy. Employers may gain more room to select carefully, but wages, onboarding, absence cover and supervision still need to fit inside the margin earned on the work.
A simple capacity review earns its place here. Compare paid hours with the hours that actually produce or support revenue. Include overtime, agency labour, repeated recruitment and unpaid owner time. Then add the gap between completing work and collecting the invoice.
A busy company can still lack the cash to carry its workforce comfortably. The more immediate danger is accepting work at yesterday’s price while delivering it with today’s labour cost.
The contractor question has changed
Flexible capacity is changing too. CBS reported that the number of zzp workers fell by 62,000 during 2025. In the first quarter of 2026, the number of self-employed jobs and hours declined again, while the number of flexible employees increased.
For firms that have long used contractors to bridge staffing gaps, this may narrow the available pool. It may also shift more work towards payroll, planning and direct supervision. That makes the reality of each working relationship more important.
The Belastingdienst resumed normal enforcement of employment-relationship rules on 1 January 2025. From 1 January 2026, vergrijpboetes may apply where intent or gross negligence has caused underpaid payroll taxes. The classification turns on the full working arrangement, including how the relationship operates day to day.
A useful review asks who sets the hours, directs the work, provides tools, carries commercial risk and decides how the work is performed. Where daily practice resembles an employee role, the payroll, tax and continuity consequences deserve professional assessment.
Back at the contractor’s office, the decision is no longer simply whether to advertise again. It is whether the next project can support a stable role, whether the current team has room to train someone, and whether the cash forecast can carry the first months.
The Dutch labour market has lost some of its heat. That gives small employers room to think more carefully. The useful number tomorrow morning remains the same: how many reliable, affordable hours can the business truly deliver?
Want to check whether your staffing plan fits your margin and cash forecast? We can review the numbers with you
The data, sourcing, and analysis behind this article were conducted by Paolo Maria Pavan. AI was not used to identify sources, build the factual basis, or produce the analytical judgment contained here. AI was used only as a drafting aid. The final English text was personally reviewed, edited, and approved by Paolo Maria Pavan before publication.
References
- Werkloosheid in juni gedaald | CBS
- CBS - Vacancies and the easing, not disappearance, of labour-market tightness
- CBS and Belastingdienst - Zzp contraction and worker-classification enforcement
- CBS - Wage pressure and contractual labour costs
- CBS - Absence as an effective-capacity constraint
- CBS - Business failures and the cash-flow backdrop
- CBS
- Belastingdienst
