EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - Non-western immigrants with a stable position in the job market

Non-western immigrants with a stable position in the job market

Introduction

Many people in minority groups have a permanent job. The majority of the Dutch population is not aware of this. The Minister of Immigration and Integration asked the Social and Cultural Planning Board (SCP) to survey the jobs market position of non-western immigrants. In this report, the SCP provides an insight into the number of non-western immigrants with a stable position in the labour market and the developments that occurred in recent years.

Description

In this report, employees with a permanent employment contract are seen as persons with a stable position in the job market. Besides the employees, self-employed individuals also form a part of the working population. In the first year of business, the number of shutdowns is very high particularly among immigrant entrepreneurs. If immigrant entrepreneurs get through the first year, the chance of survival of the business increases. These findings underlie the chosen definition: self-employed entrepreneurs who run a business for longer than a year are, according to this report, persons with a stable position in the labour market.

Conclusions

The Netherlands has almost 450 thousand non-western immigrants with a stable labour market position. This number is 41% of the non-western immigrants between 15 and 64 years old.
The percentage of non-western immigrants with a stable labour market position increased from 31% to 41% between 1994 and 2004.
The Surinamese are the most likely to have a stable labour market position (54%), followed by Antilleans (43%) and the Turkish (41%).
The increase in the percentage of non-western immigrants with a stable position is the result of the increased labour participation and of the increase in the number of self-employed entrepreneurs.
The number of immigrant entrepreneurs increased from 21 thousand in 1994 to more than 58 thousand in 2004.
Non-western immigrant employees have a permanent employment contract less often than non-immigrant employees.
The Turkish group has the most entrepreneurs, followed by the Surinamese.
Proportionally, most self-employed entrepreneurs are found among the Chinese (15%).
In comparison with non-immigrant entrepreneurs, the non-western immigrant entrepreneurs are more active in the catering industry and less active in the construction industry and business services.
Businesses owned by the Surinamese, Antilleans, the Chinese and (former) Yugoslavians have the best chances of survival.

Contact info

Social and Cultural Planning Office
Phone: +31 70 3407000
info@scp.nl

Publication date

01/11/2005

Researcher

Dagevos, J. and M. Gesthuizen

Article info
ISBN: 90-377-0249-x

Links

Social and Cultural Planning Office

Non-western immigrants with a stable position in the job market (PDF, Dut, 305 KB)

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Economy knowledge & employment > Urban economy

Keywords

Employment