The Dutch unemployment rate rose to 8.5% in December, an increase of 0.3 percentage point on November.

In 2013 as a whole, the jobless total rose by 100,000 to 668,000, the national statistics office CBS says. The number of unemployment benefit claims rose nearly 29% in December, compared with the year earlier period and 4.5% month on month.

Calculated according to the International Labour Organisation definition, the Dutch unemployment rate is now 7%.

Despite December’s rise in unemployment, ‘the trend over the past three months was downwards: on average, unemployment fell by 6,000 a month as more people withdrew from the labour market,’ the CBS says in a statement.