The thousands of financial service sector workers who are losing their jobs in the current wave of cutbacks are finding it hard to get a new job, the Financieele Dagblad said on Tuesday.

Over 60% of them end up claiming unemployment benefit (ww) for more than a year, compared with 35% of the general working population. Half of unemployed bank workers have a degree, double the rate in the population at large.

The figures come from a new report by the state run job centre organisation UWV and show bookkeepers and receptionists have just a 10% chance of finding a new job in the financial sector.

Experts told the paper that the generous redundancy packages paid by banks to sacked staff could be one reason they don’t feel the financial need to get a new job.

‘The economic necessity to find a new job quickly would appear to be less than in other sectors,’ researcher Katinka van Brakel is quoted as saying.

Last month, ING’s head of HR Hein Knaapen caused an outcry when he said a large part of the bank’s 52,000 strong workforce had become too reliant on generous secondary benefits, generous redundancy packages and the tough laws governing redundancy in the Netherlands and Belgium.