Suitable employment
The person entitled to unemployment benefits is obliged to make efforts to find suitable employment. If he is unemployed for a longer period of time, the person entitled to unemployment benefits is also obliged to accept employment under his educational/experience level.
After only 6 months of unemployment benefits, all employment, irrespective of (salary) level or travelling time, shall be considered suitable, unless benefits were already in effect on 1 July 2015. In that case the old rule applies that the person entitled to unemployment benefits may devote his attention to finding employment at the same level as his last employment. After 6 months employment at a lower level of education (and corresponding remuneration) is also considered suitable. After 1 year of unemployment all employment is suitable
Settlement of income
If the person entitled to unemployment benefits returns (partially) to work the first 2 months 75%, and from the third month 70% of the income of the person entitled to unemployment benefits shall be settled with the unemployment benefits. The purpose of this arrangement is to ensure that working during a period of entitlements to unemployment benefits is always beneficial. The settlement shall be applied from the first day of unemployment. The right to unemployment benefits shall be terminated if a person entitled to unemployment benefits no longer has a substantial loss of wages, i.e. once the monthly income from employment exceeds 87,5% of the monthly wages in the meaning of the Unemployment Benefits Act.
Any right to unemployment benefits in effect on 1 July 2015 remains subject to the present hours settlement system, in which the number of hours that the person entitled to unemployment benefits works are deducted from the unemployment benefits.
As per 1 July 2015 the Employee Insurance Schemes (Daily Wage Rules) Decree ("Dagloonbesluit werknemersverzekeringen") has also been amended. Under the old rules the daily wage was determined based on the wages that an employee was entitled to, based on his last employment before unemployment. Situations could arise in which these wages were not representative for the average daily wages that the employee had earned in the last year before unemployment. The daily wage is now calculated based on the wages that were earned based on all the employment relationships in the qualifying period of one year preceding (the last day of the second tax period before) the commencement of the unemployment, divided by 261 days.
A new daily wage guarantee applies to employees that after an employment relationship of at least 1 year have accepted employment against a lower remuneration as a consequence of which they do not have to appeal to unemployment benefits and subsequently become unemployed. In that scenario the daily wage is based on the employment against higher remuneration. The guarantee applies under the following conditions:
- the first employment lasted at least 1 year;
- no entitlement to regular unemployment benefits arose after the termination of the first employment because the second employment started; and
- the period of unemployment starts within 54 weeks after the termination of the first employment.
