Female municipal employees earn slightly more than male colleagues

Women who work at municipal offices in the Netherlands earned slightly more than their male colleagues for the first time last year. The average gross monthly salary of women came out at 3,679 euros, compared to 3,653 on average for their male colleagues, RTL Nieuws reports based on figures from the annual staff monitor by the A+O fonds Gemeente.

The proportion of female managers at municipal offices increased from 37 percent in 2016 to 40 percent last year. The 388 Dutch municipalities employed a total of 160,810 people at the end of last year, 2.2 percent more than the year before.

The absenteeism rate at municipalities was 5.4 percent last year, a slight decrease compared to the 5.6 percent in 2017, but still 1.4 percent higher than the national average. According to RTL, this can mainly be attributed to a large number of municipal employees who are over the age of 60 and who have long-term illnesses.