May 2025 and apparently, nothing happened.

That’s what the numbers would like us to believe. 3.8% unemployment, same as April. A tidy -2,000 drop in the number of people without work. 7,000 new jobs per month. Even the Dutch national treasure, the UWV, calmly notes a slight uptick in unemployment benefits, just 2.4k more this month. “Rustig aan,” says the data. “We’re fine.”

But let’s slow down and ask: are we?

The Illusion of Stability: Flatlined Doesn’t Mean Healthy

Imagine you’re in an ICU. Your heart monitor shows a perfect flatline. Nobody panics. In fact, the nurse smiles and says, “At least it’s not worse than yesterday.”

That’s how absurd it is to treat labor data as a scoreboard instead of a diagnostic tool. When you read, “Unemployment is stable,” you should ask, “Yes, but who left the field?”

This is not a game of musical chairs. This is structural attrition.

Here’s the hidden headline: 3.2 million people between 15 and 75 are outside the workforce. Not unemployed. Not employed. Just… invisible. They didn’t apply. They’re not ‘available’. We call them the “non-labor force,” a polite term for “those we gave up measuring.”

And while we pat ourselves on the back for 7,000 more people getting paid every month, we’re ignoring the quiet exodus of another 7,000 per month leaving the workforce entirely. Retirement, illness, burnout, broken systems, take your pick. We don’t ask. We just stop counting.

UWV and the ‘Benefit Factory’

Let’s talk about WW benefits, a more honest indicator of economic pulse. In May, we saw:

• +2.4k new unemployment benefits
• 27.7k new benefit claims
• 25.3k terminations

Translation? More people entered the system than left it. And not just in sectors you’d expect. Agriculture (+7.3%), food (+7.0%), construction (+5.1%), government (+4.5%). The "boom sectors" of yesterday are quietly bleeding.

We are not witnessing economic dynamism. We are watching a rotating door where people fall out of one sector, enter another, then loop back through social protection.

A Labor Market of Ghosts and Guests

Of the 385,000 unemployed, 241,000 were already unemployed three months ago. Only a trickle—barely enough to be called a flow, made it back into work. Meanwhile:

• 149,000 lost their job
• 112,000 started looking (but didn’t find work)

We praise net growth of 7,000 jobs per month as if it’s a triumph. But remember: the labor force itself grew by 5,000 per month. That’s not dynamism, it’s population drift with a side of statistical massage.

It’s not enough to count how many are working. We must ask:

Who can no longer afford not to work, yet still can’t find a foothold?

Who gets categorized out of relevance because we don’t have the tools to understand their story?

And who benefits from this illusion of stability?

What the Numbers Won’t Say (But Should)

• Labor participation rose slightly (to 73.3%), but only among women has it truly bounced back to mid-2024 highs. This isn’t equity. It’s economic compulsion.
• The workforce grows by 5,000 per month while 3,000 fall into unemployment or inactivity every cycle. It’s like filling a leaky bucket and pretending the floor isn’t wet.
• Sectoral volatility is real. If food, agriculture, and government are shedding people, then even the pillars of our supposed resilience are trembling.

Conclusion: Don’t Read the News. Read the System.

The unemployment rate is not the temperature of the economy. It’s the fever-reducing pill we swallow to avoid asking what’s causing the chills.

A 3.8% unemployment rate means nothing if we keep quiet-quitting our accountability, outsourcing our moral courage, and benching millions as statistical afterthoughts.

At Xtroverso and under the ZENTRIQ™ lens, we don’t ask whether the number is “good.” We ask what it hides.

And in May 2025, it’s hiding plenty.