Unemployed Expats Hoping They’ll Find New Jobs In The Netherlands

Dutch media are now reporting on the plight of expat professional residents who’ve lost their jobs.

Concentrating on the situations now being experienced by highly-skilled expat incomers and students at Dutch universities, the media is exposing their visa situations once they lose their jobs as well as citing their struggles to maintain employment. Those who don’t succeed have just three short months to find new employment before they’re forced to leave the country, with the international community now experiencing fear on a daily basis.

A recent survey has revealed around half of those who’d responded are worried about the pandemic’s effect on their jobs and incomes, and some are now stranded in the Netherlands after all international flights were cancelled. Eindhoven’s Holland Expat Centre South is telling it like it is, saying the regulations for staying on are at best unclear but adding the immigration authority is taking a soft attitude to expats’ issues as a result.

Even so, some expats are managing to leave, with the expensive end of the residential property sector suffering a lack of demand as a result. Interestingly, the survey also revealed a good number of now unemployed expats are using their free time in lockdown to improve their Dutch language skills, possibly indicating they’re keen to stay in

the country.

The pandemic has had an impact on the Amsterdam property market, with holiday rentals now halted and demand from expat professionals diminishing day by day. International students at local universities are leaving in droves after deciding they’ll continue with their courses back in the home country. Interestingly, 70 per cent of the survey’s respondents had at least some support for the government’s attempts to control the virus.