Economic outlook more negative

The Business Cycle Tracer is a tool to monitor the state and the cycle of the Dutch economy. It presents a coherent macroeconomic picture of the past month or quarter, based on all the figures published by CBS. However, it does not apply equally to all households, enterprises or regions.

Consumer and producer confidence deteriorated

Consumers were slightly more pessimistic in June than in the previous month. Consumer confidence is low and positioned well below the long-term average over the past two decades. Producer confidence deteriorated in June, falling slightly below its long-term average.

Household consumption up, export and investments down

In April 2023, households spent 0.3 percent more year on year, adjusted for price changes and the shopping-day pattern. They continued to spend more on services and less on goods.

The total volume (working-day adjusted) of goods exports was down by 0.5 percent year on year in April. The decrease was mainly seen in exports of chemical and metal products.

The volume of investments in tangible fixed assets was down by 2.4 percent year on year. This was mainly due to lower investments in residential property.

Manufacturing output over 12 percent down in April

In April 2023, the average daily output of the Dutch manufacturing industry was 12.1 percent lower than in April 2022. This is the largest decrease since May 2009. Output also contracted on an annual basis in the three preceding months of this year. Relative to March 2023, output declined by 3.0 percent in April.

More bankruptcies in May

The number of corporate bankruptcies, adjusted for court session days, has increased. There were 16 more bankruptcies in May than in the previous month, an increase of 7 percent. The number of bankruptcies remained below the pre-pandemic level. However, the total over the first five months of the year was roughly 50 percent higher than the same period in 2022.

House prices almost 6 percent lower in May

In May, owner-occupied dwellings (excluding new constructions) were on average 5.6 percent cheaper than in May 2022. The decline is again larger than a month earlier. Relative to April, the price index of existing owner-occupied dwellings decreased by 0.1 percent in May.

More hours worked, fewer unemployed, equal number of vacancies

In Q1 2023, the number of hours worked, adjusted for seasonal effects, was 0.7 percent higher than in the previous quaerter. Total hours worked by employees and self-employed people over Q1 2023 amounted to over 3.6 billion.

In Q1 2023, turnover at temporary employment and job placement agencies rose by 3.2 percent relative to the previous quarter.

In May 2023, 353 thousand people aged 15 to 74 years were unemployed. This is 3.5 percent of the labour force. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) measures the trend in the number of unemployed as an average change over the past three months. From March through May, unemployment declined slightly by an average of one thousand per month.

At the end of March, there were 437 thousand unfilled vacancies, just as many as at the end of December 2022. This stabilisation follows two quarters of decline.

Economic contraction 0.3 percent in Q1 2023

According to the second quarterly estimate, in Q1 2023 gross domestic product (GDP) decreased by 0.3 percent relative to the previous quarter. In Q4 2022, GDP rose by 0.9 percent. The contraction in the first quarter of 2023 is mainly due to increased withdrawals from storage facilities.