The 2035 openings are mostly replacement

Projections to 2035 are not measurements, but they force an answer to a question quarterly figures dodge: where will next decade's work come from? For the Netherlands, the European centre for vocational training has done that sum. This paper reads the Dutch 2025 edition.

The core of the forecast: Dutch employment grows slightly to 2035, somewhat slower even than the EU average. Job openings therefore barely come from new jobs.

Of all expected openings between 2022 and 2035, 68% is replacement demand: people retiring or leaving their occupation who must be replaced. Among technicians and associate professionals that share is 91%: there, recruitment in the coming decade is almost entirely a replacement task.

The demography behind it is sharper than the EU average. The Dutch labour force aged 55 and over grows by 16% between 2020 and 2035, against just under 10% in the EU. The greying of the workplace here is not a receding wave but one still swelling.

The forecast also distributes the openings across occupations and sectors:

• Professionals account for 44% of all job openings, by far the largest block.
• Even shrinking or stable occupation groups keep producing openings: clerical work and elementary occupations together still count for 16% of openings, almost entirely from replacement.
• By sector, business and other services grow fastest, around 1% a year, followed by construction at 0.7%. Health, at 16% of employment, grows around 1% a year on the ageing population. Retail, also 16% of employment, shrinks.

Of Dutch job openings to 2035, 72% require high qualifications, about 12 points above the EU average. The forecast expects supply to grow along: the highly qualified share of the labour force rises from 42% to 55% by 2035, the medium-qualified share falls from 40% to 36% and the low-qualified share nearly halves, from 18% to 9%.

That shifts the scarcity but does not resolve it. If 72% of demand is highly qualified and 55% of supply, the tension stays at the top, exactly where today's shortage lists already sit.

• These are model outcomes under assumptions about growth, demography and policy, not measurements. The figures deserve the word expected at every repetition.
• The Dutch edition is the 2025 forecast; the centre published a new round in 2026 with a deepened replacement analysis. Both point the same way; the decimals not necessarily.
• The forecast speaks of qualification levels, not fields. That 72% must be highly qualified does not yet say in what.
• Where this European forecast and the Dutch ROA projection differ, both belong on the page. This paper leans on the European one; the Dutch counterpart sits in the earlier replacement demand paper.

• The quotable number. 68% of Dutch job openings to 2035 is replacement, and among technicians 91%. Growth is the exception, departure is the rule.
• Recruitment turns structural, not cyclical. Demand that comes from departure does not move with the economy. Waiting for calmer times does not help a replacement market.
• The top stays the squeeze. 72% of openings require high qualifications. Competition for the highly educated is not a phase but the playing field of the coming decade.
• Shrinking occupations keep recruiting too. Clerical and elementary work together still deliver 16% of openings. A shrinking occupation group is not an empty vacancy market.

All figures come from the country report Netherlands: 2025 skills forecast by Cedefop, the European centre for vocational training, and its accompanying forecasting tool, retrieved on 1 September 2026. The publication is under Cedefop's copyright and is summarised and rewritten here, not reproduced.

The forecast is a macroeconomic model projection per country, sector, occupation group and qualification level, with 2022 as the base year for the openings calculation and a horizon of 2035. Job openings are the sum of expansion demand and replacement demand. The shares in this paper, 68%, 91%, 44% and 72%, are the published forecast outcomes for the Netherlands and carry the uncertainty of any projection; they are phrased as expectations throughout. A new forecasting round appeared in 2026 with a dedicated replacement analysis; it is named here but not blended in, so that every figure comes from one edition.