High unemployment will continue to dog the Dutch economy in 2016, Rabobank economists said in a new report on Monday.

They forecast the jobless total will only decline slowly because the increase in job vacancies will be offset by increasing demand for work. The bank describes the unemployment rate as a ‘stain’ on the country’s economic prospects.

The bank’s economists put economic growth at 2.5% next year, up from 2% in their earlier estimates. This is roughly in line with the government’s macro-economic planning agency CPB and a string of other forecasters.