Dutch residents with a non-western background are increasingly participating in the labor market. People with a migrant background from countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia have come to paid work more often in recent years. The Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) reports this in a report. During the crisis, relatively more people with a non-Western migrant background fell outside the labor market. But this has been recovering for a while. Meanwhile, the gap between the proportion of workers with a non-Western migration background and that with a Dutch background has shrunk to the lowest level since 2008. People with a Moroccan and Turkish migration background reduced the gap. According to Statistics Netherlands, the labor force participation of these two groups is higher than at the highest point before the start of the financial crisis. On the other hand, the number of people with an Antillean, Aruban and Surinamese migration background lag behind the temporary peak, which according to the statistics office was reached in 2008. In 2018, about six out of ten people with a non-Western migrant background had paid work. For people with a Dutch background this was about seven out of ten, which means a difference of 8.2 percentage point between the two groups. In total, about 6.9 million people with a Dutch background and almost 1 million people with a non-western background had a job last year.
