In The Netherlands, as in many countries: unemployment rates of lower educated workers are higher and more cyclical … than unemployment rates of higher educated workers. In this paper we test whether this is caused by the fact that more …

-off policy of firms can explain the relatively high level of unemployment amongst lower educated workers and the relatively … strong sensitivity of their unemployment rate to the business cycle. We find that lay-off rates decrease with education but … with a higher level of education can not explain the stronger cyclicality of the unemployment rate for lower educated …