There are now 133 jobs on offer for every 100 people looking for work, national statistics office CBS said on Tuesday.

The figure, a new record, is due to both an increase in the number of vacancies, which rose by 59,000 in the first quarter of the year, and a further decline in the jobless total, which fell by 32,000, the CBS said.

As in previous quarters, most vacancies are in trade, including retail, business services and healthcare. The three sectors are responsible for half of all jobs on offer. The biggest rise in vacancies is in the hospitality sector, where there are now over 44,600 jobs waiting to be filled.

On Monday, the CBS said the number of people in work had passed the nine million mark for the first time. Employment increased by 5% since 2019 to 8.9 million by the end of February.

Government and healthcare were the fastest growing sectors and now account for 2.6 million jobs altogether, a 9.5% increase in the last two years.

‘Labour market participation has never been so high. Some people have two jobs,’ said CBS chief economist Pieter Hein van Mulligen. ‘We see that many companies are struggling with the shortage of personnel. And that will continue for the time being as the population continues to age.’

Nevertheless, the Netherlands still has a pool of some 1.1 million people who are not currently working. Of them, 338,000 are officially unemployed and around 500,000 are part-timers who would like to work more hours, the CBS said. The rest are not actively looking for work.