The number of people claiming unemployment benefit (ww) rose 1% in February, compared with the previous month, the national statistics office CBS said on Thursday.

Some 469,000 people are now claiming jobless benefits, the CBS said.

The rise in February is largely due to the impact of a number of prominent high street bankruptcies. Department store group V&D is among the retail companies which have recently gone bust with the loss of thousands of jobs.

With 7,000 people added to the jobless ranks last month, some 6.5% of the Dutch working population is now officially without work, the CBS said.

‘February was a horrible month for a lot of people,’ social affairs minister Lodewijk Asscher told news agency ANP in a reaction to the new figures. Nevertheless, the jobless total is down on a year ago, he said.

High street retailers have been struggling for several years, with profit across the clothing sector down 36% in 2014, the CBS said in a new analysis of Dutch retail. In the four years from 2010, collective net provision had fallen 83%, the CBS said.