Next time you hear somebody say “all those foreigners are stealing our jobs!”, you can shut them down with this new research, which shows that no, foreigners are not stealing Dutch jobs.
The research from the Social and Cultural Planning Office (SCP) and the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) tells us that foreign workers very rarely take the jobs that Dutch people were doing. Despite people feeling like the influx of foreign workers coming to the Netherlands has affected their work chances, evidence has shown no correlation between the two. We all know how difficult it can be to secure a job, and with so many people going for the same job, people felt that immigration was making a major difference.
New arrivals to the Netherlands
The only slight truth is that this may be applicable to migrants who have just arrived in the country and are competing for low-skilled work, however, the SCP ensures that this is short-lived. After they have secured a job, the effects are minimal. Migrant workers also tend to do work that others are not prepared to do, therefore people are not replaced, but given a different role, meaning that work is not technically ‘taken.’
In fact, young, old, educated, skilled and migrant workers actually complement each other in the Dutch labour market. The same can also be said of the number of people studying, it’s actually pretty balanced and not detrimental at all. This is great news! Time to shut down the haters.
