Dutch youth more often have a side job than their European peers

In the Netherlands, very few young people are sitting still. The vast majority are either working or studying. And three-quarters of young people do both. This is significantly more than in the rest of the European Union.

In the Netherlands, 77 per cent of young people aged 15 to 24 are employed, according to CBS. Denmark ranks second in the EU with a percentage of 57, while in Greece only 18 per cent of young people are working.

In the Netherlands, 74 per cent of young people combine work and study. CBS does not have current European figures but refers to comparable data from Eurostat for 2022: this also shows that considerably more Dutch youth (aged 15 to 29) are working (73 per cent) than in other EU countries (see table below). In non-EU countries Iceland, Switzerland and Norway, the percentage is also high.

Students

There are no immediate explanations for this striking difference, but according to researcher Frans Kaiser from the KiTeS institute at the University of Twente, the gap with other European countries narrows when focusing solely on students.

Dutch students are more likely to live at home and often work less than twenty hours, meaning they typically have small part-time jobs. This is less common elsewhere. In the rest of Europe, students are generally older and more likely to live independently, with or without children. When they do work, they often put in longer hours.

Not sitting still

In the Netherlands, relatively few young people neither study nor work: less than five per cent. The average in the EU is 11 per cent, while in Romania almost 20 per cent of young people are idle. This country struggles with high youth unemployment but also fails to keep young people in school.