Hire-a-refugee program takes on tight labor market
When Rasha Mostafa fled war-torn Syria with her husband and daughter 41/2 years ago, little did she know she was going to help Amsterdam with a key economic problem.
The Dutch capital has leaned on the 33-year-old for jobs many of the city’s inhabitants shun — from assisting bakers at supermarket Albert Heijn and administrative work at a language institute to taking care of children at a refugee center. The Arabic literature graduate from Damascus is now a shop assistant at fashion retailer C&A on the western edge of Amsterdam, tidying up the store, putting clothes back on hangers and helping customers.
“The manager asked me if I soon want to learn to handle the cash register,” she said in passable Dutch.
With 2.4 million immigrants entering the European Union from outside the bloc in 2017, the latest data available, the debate over refugees deeply divides the region and has spurred the rise of populists. Yet in many large cities, migrants are quietly filling gaping holes in the labor market, doing jobs locals just don’t want to do. In Amsterdam, which has one of lowest unemployment rates for a European city, the refugees may be a godsend in many sectors — from hospitality and transport to information technology. The city is making an active push to get businesses to hire them.
With a jobless rate of 3.3%, the second-lowest in the euro area after Germany, the Netherlands faces an acute shortage of workers. Unemployment in Amsterdam, the country’s largest city, is lower still. Dutch central bank president Klaas Knot wrote in the institution’s annual report in March that staff shortages present a real challenge, characterizing the labor market as tight.
“Obstacles due to insufficient staffing increased sharply in all sectors during the year,” Knot wrote. “Against this background, it is likely that economic growth will level off in the coming years.” Economists predict an expansion in the country of 1.8% this year, after 2.7% in 2018.
As of the beginning of last year, 6,055 refugees had been granted temporary residence permits in Amsterdam. Nearly 5,000 of them came to the Netherlands in or after 2014, with half of those arriving from Syria.
The Dutch city’s government embarked in 2016 on what’s dubbed the “Amsterdam Approach,” which is helping solve two glaring problems in the city: integrating thousands of refugees and addressing a lack of workers. At the end of last year, 53% of the city’s asylum seekers with residence permits who’d sought welfare benefits in 2014 had found work, enrolled in education or no longer claimed state assistance.
About 80 “client managers” — many of whom are themselves migrants — work in Amsterdam with about 50 refugees each. They discuss everything from asylum procedures, Dutch language lessons and finding work to emotional support. It’s a long process that requires patience from all involved, said Marlet Schreuder, a refugee-integration specialist in Amsterdam’s City Hall.