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Who moves between jobs, how often, and where the workers a market gains come from: job changes, second jobs, working from home, and leaving unemployment.
Every quarter, hundreds of thousands of Dutch employees start work for a new employer. In the second quarter of 2026 the count was 320,000, or 4.0% of all employees, roughly one in 25. Since 2013 the quarterly rate has moved between 2.6% and 5.3%, and the tight-market peak has fully unwound: the current pace sits almost exactly on the 2019 level. The flow is carried by the flexible layer: more than six in ten switchers leave a flexible contract, and 85% start on one again after the move.
The Netherlands is Europe's home-working country. In 2025, 11.3% of employed people aged 15 to 64 usually worked from home and 41.0% sometimes did, together 52.3%. Sweden follows at a distance with 44.5% and the EU average stands at 23.0%. The total has been nearly stable since 2021, but the mix shifted: fully remote fell from 20.4% to 11.3%, while occasional home working rose from 33.5% to 41.0%. Hybrid won. For recruitment this means commuting distance matters less in the Netherlands than anywhere else in Europe.
Unemployment in the Netherlands is mostly a pass-through. Over the four quarters to the first quarter of 2026, an average of 37.0% of unemployed people were in work one quarter later, more than one in three. The EU average stands at 23.1%, and only Denmark sits higher at 39.2%. At the peak of the tight market the Dutch outflow was higher still: 41.5% over the same quarters in 2022 and 2023. The other side is small but growing: the share of workers becoming unemployed rose within a year from 1.0% to 1.4% per quarter.
Nowhere in the EU do as many people stack jobs as in the Netherlands. In 2025, 983,000 workers aged 15 to 64 held a second job, 10.4% of all employed people, against an EU average of 4.1%. Denmark follows at 9.7%, Germany stands at 5.1%. The explanation sits close to the part-time structure: where main jobs are small, there is room to stack. For recruitment the second job is an underrated signal: nearly a million people demonstrate they can and will work more hours than their main job offers.
