There is a large hidden unemployment among self-employed people. Many self-employed people without employees benefit when the country is doing well economically, but suffer the first blows in economically difficult times. They hardly have a safety net. Because self-employed people are not registered anywhere, there is a lot of hidden unemployment. Getting started on social assistance or with unemployment benefits is not necessarily very attractive because it is immediately cut. There are more and more self-employed people who are unemployed. This is largely caused by the Credit Crisis. This crisis was caused by the fact that many American homeowners were no longer able to pay off their mortgages. As a result, many banks got into trouble. Some went bankrupt. Stock markets worldwide fell. The crisis also spread to Europe and unemployment started to rise from 2008. Temporary workers and self-employed people were the first to suffer. This is because permanent workers in the Netherlands have quite a lot of rights. It therefore takes relatively much effort and time for an employer to dismiss them. This costs nothing for self-employed persons and temporary workers.
Unemployment among self-employed people
The abbreviation zzp’er stands for self-employed person without employees. This phenomenon emerged in the 1990s. Many employees saw that they could earn much better if they were not permanently employed, but hired themselves out to their employer. At the same time, many companies wanted to be more flexible and respond more quickly to economic fluctuations. This would become easier with fewer fixed costs due to permanent staff. They therefore mainly encouraged staff to leave employment. The number of self-employed people grew rapidly in many sectors, such as construction, healthcare and education. There are now almost a million self-employed people. The advantage is that they benefit when the economy is doing well, but they also take the hit in bad economic times.
Hidden unemployment among self-employed people without employees
A problem with self-employed people in times of an economic crisis is that there is a lot of hidden unemployment. Many self-employed people make a significant living and can sometimes almost be seen as unemployed, but are not registered as such. While many of them sometimes earn less than the minimum wage. There is also no social safety net. This is because they do not pay premiums and are therefore not entitled to unemployment benefits in the event of unemployment. For example, the only thing a self-employed person can insure against is disability. At the same time, many self-employed people do not do that because it costs a lot of money. Most of them don’t just have that amount or take the gamble that everything will go well. In practice this turns out to be quite disappointing. There are many self-employed people who now wish they could become employed again, but many employers are hesitant to hire self-employed people because they think that they are often very headstrong because they are not used to working under a boss.
Getting started as a self-employed person on social assistance or with unemployment benefits
People often choose to work as a self-employed person after they have been fired. Please note that all earnings will then be deducted from unemployment benefits. There are special arrangements that make it possible to receive an exemption for a certain amount. When it comes to social assistance, the rules are even stricter. Every euro earned is immediately deducted from the benefit. That does not necessarily make it attractive for people to work independently. This is because most people will not immediately exceed nine hundred euros, the approximate amount that a single person receives when he applies for benefits. Various municipalities have schemes that allow people who want to get started to receive an interest-free loan, for example.