The number of people aged between 15 and 75 in paid employment in the Netherlands has increased by an average of 21,000 a month for the past three months, the national statistics office CBS said on Thursday.

In September more than 8.6 million had a paid job while a further 4.3 million were not working. Of them, 422,000 were officially classed as unemployed.

The shift means the official Dutch unemployment rate fell to 4.7% in September, down from 5.7% a year ago and 4.9% on the previous quarter. The figures do not include people with part time jobs who would like to work more hours.

At the same time, 351,000 people were claiming unemployment benefit (ww), a drop of 11,000 on the second quarter of this year.