Economic picture slightly more negative in November

The CBS Business Cycle Tracer is a tool used to monitor the state of the Dutch economy. It provides an overall macroeconomic picture of the past month or quarter, based on all the figures published by CBS. This picture will still vary between households, enterprises or regions, however.

Consumers more negative, producers less negative

Consumers were more negative in December than they were in November. However, producers were less negative. Consumer and producer confidence were below the long-term average for the past twenty years.

Household consumption, exports and investment up

Household spending was 0.4 percent higher in October 2024 than it was in October 2023, adjusted for price changes and the shopping-day pattern. Households spent more on both services and goods.

In October 2024, the total volume of goods exported (adjusted for the number of working days) was up by 1.7 percent year on year. Export volumes were higher for food, beverages and tobacco, chemical products, machinery and electronic products, in particular.

In October 2024, the investment volume for tangible fixed assets was up by 5.2 percent year on year. This was mainly due to higher investments in passenger cars and other road transport (lorries, trailers, vans, etc.).

Manufacturing output down by 2.5 percent in October

The calendar-adjusted output of Dutch manufacturing was 2.5 percent lower in October 2024 than it was in October 2023. Output has now contracted for sixteen consecutive months. After adjustment for seasonal and calendar effects, manufacturing output fell by 0.6 percent in October relative to September.

More bankruptcies in November

Adjusted for the number of court session days, there were 19 more bankruptcies in November 2024 than in October. That was an increase of 6 percent. There has been an upward trend in the number of bankruptcies for more than two years.

House prices up by almost 12 percent in November

Existing owner-occupied dwellings were 11.9 percent more expensive in November 2024 than one year previously, on average. That is the largest increase in over two years. Prices were 0.9 percent higher in November than they were in October.

Fewer hours worked and fewer vacancies, unemployment unchanged

In Q3 2023, the number of hours worked fell by 0.1 percent on the previous quarter after adjustment for seasonal effects. Employees and self-employed people worked a total of over 3.7 billion hours in Q3 2024.

At the end of Q3 2024, there were 397 thousand vacancies, 5 thousand fewer than in the previous quarter. The number of vacancies has been falling for almost two consecutive years.
In November 2024, there were 372 thousand unemployed persons in the Netherlands, which was 3.7 percent of the labour force – the same percentage as the last three months.

In Q3 2024, the turnover of temporary employment and job placement agencies was 2.6 percent higher than in Q3 2023.

Economic growth of 0.8 percent in Q3 2024

According to the second estimate from Statistics Netherlands (CBS), gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 0.8 percent in Q3 2024 relative to the previous quarter. In Q2 the economy grew by 1.1 percent. The growth in Q3 was mainly due to public and household consumption.