Dutch economy employed 80,000 Poles in 2004
There were 80,000 Poles working legally in the Netherlands in 2004. Of this group, 10,000 had settled in the Netherlands, while the other 70,000 were temporary workers who lived in Poland, the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) reported yesterday.
The 70,000 spent short periods in the Netherlands and were not registered with a Dutch local authority. Such registration is only compulsory for Poles who take up an employment contract for longer than four months.
Of the 70,000 Polish temporary workers who were not subject to the registration requirement, more than a quarter had several short-term jobs in 2004. Between them, these Polish workers thus had almost 100,000 jobs. This was three times as many as in 2000. One in three of this group was a woman.
Most temporary employees from Poland work via a temporary employment agency. In 2004, there were more than 60,000 ‘Polish’ temporary jobs, four times as many as in 2000. The recruitment and intermediation is usually done by specialised employment agencies. The average temporary job lasts three months.
The CBS also looked at the number of temporary workers who settled in the Netherlands. This covered all the countries that joined the EU in May 2004. In 2004, 14,000 workers from these eight countries settled in the Netherlands, including 10,000 originally from Poland, 2000 from former Czechoslovakia and 1,600 from Hungary. In this group, more than two-thirds were women.
Most of the workers from Eastern Europe who settle in the Netherlands work in the services sector, including healthcare, commerce and the business services sector. Contrary to the group of 70,000, there is no question of a strong concentration in agriculture or an extremely high proportion of temping staff in this group.
Source: NIS News, ANP, 26 September 2006
