Summary - Supply of labour 2016

Working, caring and learning in a flexible labour market

Original title: Aanbod van Arbeid 2016

The Dutch government is keen to increase the labour participation rate. This has consequences for people’s personal lives, because if they begin doing (more) paid work, this also increases the demands placed on them in other areas of life: working, caring and learning are inextricably intertwined. On the one hand, more and more people are combining paid work with care tasks, whilst on the other hand training is seen as an important means of enabling workers to remain in employment until retirement age (sustainable employability).
Working, caring and learning in a flexible labour market constitute the central theme of this report, which describes the key trends in this area from the perspective of working and non-working people in the Netherlands. Among the topics covered are flexible employment, combining paid work with providing voluntary care, and formal and informal training for working people.

The report is based on data from a long-term survey of 4,500 working and non-working people in the Netherlands, which has been coordinated by the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP) since 2010, and which is repeated every two years.