One in four of the 150,000 people who stopped working in the second quarter of this year did so because their temporary contract was not renewed, the national statistics office CBS said on Monday.

A further 40% say their job ended, either because the project they were working on had come to an end, or they were made redundant because of cutbacks.

Some 8% of the people leaving the labour force retired and 7% could no longer work for health reasons.