The crisis will disappear, and the jobs engine will start rotating again. According to Joop Schippers, Professor of Labour Economics, we should not cheer up too fast. He expects that the end of the crisis will not solve everything. "Indeed, there is also structural unemployment."
Moreover, the labour market has changed comparing to the previous crisis in the 80s. Ton Wilthagen, Professor of Labour Market says: "In the eighties and nineties, financial services continued to grow during the crisis. Now there is no one behind the counter, and the insurance company does not take the phone anymore. This crisis is, perhaps, more similar to that in the thirties. This can be a period of low creation of jobs but growth can continue.”
In 2008, the Commission Bakker predicted a shortage of 375 thousand workers for the year 2015. Indeed, there would be more people retiring than young people joining the labour market. But Paul de Beer, Professor of Industrial Relations says that this fact shows how a shrinking workforce does not automatically lead to deficiency in the labour market. "We don’t understand about the market. Offer and demand interact. "
The labour market is more than a simple sum of the workforce minus the number of jobs. It is an unpredictable monster that swallows up people. The Nederlandsche Bank also finds this mismatch: "Despite a wide range of job seekers, the unmet demand for jobs is also high.”
New jobs come finally, but people are not ready. The advice? "Think what unusual skills you have for a top demanded profession," says Marjolein ten Hoonte, Labour Market Director at Randstad.
Source: P&O actueel