Freelancers in childcare massively moving to permanent employment: ABN Amro
Freelancers in Dutch childcare returned en masse to permanent employment in 2025, following a government crackdown on so-called false self-employment. Most have taken up contracts directly with childcare providers, while others are working through staffing and secondment agencies.
The use of self-employed workers in daycare and after-school care has dropped by an estimated 70 percent, according to ABN AMRO, which based its analysis on consultations with childcare organizations, industry associations and freelance intermediaries. “We have not employed a single freelancer in 2025,” Remko Berkel, CEO of Babilou Family, a childcare organization with 300 locations, told ABN AMRO.
This marks a sharp turnaround for a sector that, just a year ago, relied on some 17,000 freelancers—roughly 10 percent of all childcare workers. Those freelancers were collectively responsible for an estimated 6 million hours of care each month, caring for around 90,000 of the 900,000 children using childcare services across the Netherlands.
The shift is largely due to the Dutch Tax Authority’s enforcement of the DBA Act on false self-employment, which began Jan. 1, 2025. Sectors with high risks of false self-employment—including childcare, healthcare, education and government—have come under particular scrutiny. In an earlier report, Employers Struggle With False Self-Employment Enforcement, ABN AMRO warned that pedagogical workers who operate within childcare centers as freelancers are often structurally embedded in the organizations, making them de facto employees.
A Tax Authority publication, Freelancer—Yes or No?, uses a pedagogical worker as a key example of someone who does not qualify as a freelancer because of the level of supervision and integration. The publication cites the Dutch Supreme Court’s 2023 Deliveroo ruling, which outlines nine criteria for distinguishing between employment contracts and freelance agreements.
In anticipation of the crackdown, Babilou Family announced in July 2024 that it would stop working with freelancers. “If you follow the law, you cannot possibly be a freelancer in childcare,” Berkel told Dutch broadcaster NOS at the time. Many other organizations and trade groups followed suit, declaring that freelancers would no longer be used “on the group”—that is, working directly with children.
Despite the mass exit from daycare and after-school care, freelancers have not disappeared entirely from the sector. They continue to work in areas with minimal risk of false self-employment, such as in-home childminding, where approximately 7,500 self-employed host parents remain active. Freelancers are also still used on a limited basis for specialized roles like music and sports instruction or last-minute fill-ins.
Tadaah, an online childcare staffing platform, is targeting these niche opportunities. The company has defined 13 specific criteria for legitimate freelance work in childcare, based on the nine legal points laid out by the Supreme Court. “If these criteria are met—say, in short-notice fill-in shifts—then pedagogical workers can still operate as freelancers,” Tadaah CEO Steven Lenderink told ABN AMRO. He noted that some professionals are combining the stability of a staff contract with the autonomy of freelance work. “They combine the certainty of a job with the autonomy of being self-employed,” Lenderink said.
While tax enforcement was the immediate trigger, childcare industry leaders cited broader reasons for cutting ties with freelancers. The largest trade associations, Brancheorganisatie Kinderopvang (BK) and Branchevereniging Maatschappelijke Kinderopvang (BMK), raised concerns about continuity, emotional safety for children, fairness among staff and cost control.
“Using freelancers on the group doesn’t contribute to continuity or emotional safety for the children,” the associations said in a joint statement. “It also causes friction with permanent staff, who see freelancers doing fewer tasks for better pay. On top of that, it increases costs and threatens the affordability of childcare.”
Similar concerns are now playing out in healthcare and education. Noël de Vries, CEO of healthcare secondment agency TMI, reported a significant drop in demand for freelancers since the beginning of 2025. “Childcare is leading the shift, but it’s happening across healthcare,” de Vries told ABN AMRO. He added that overall capacity has not fallen, as more professionals are working under contracts through temp or secondment agencies. “People don’t just leave healthcare to start over somewhere else,” he said.
According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), there were 6,000 childcare vacancies in the fourth quarter of 2024. The industry employs around 130,000 people and has a vacancy rate of 46, making it one of the tightest labor markets in the country. Yet ABN AMRO does not expect staff shortages to worsen due to the crackdown. Most former freelancers have returned to payroll employment, and more childcare centers are now hiring temporary staff—a group that was rarely used in the sector until recently.
Additionally, many centers have made operational changes to encourage employees to work more hours. These include improved scheduling that takes worker preferences into account. Larger organizations have expanded their own flexible staffing pools to offer employees greater autonomy and variety.
The childcare industry provides nearly 60 million hours of care each month to around 916,000 children, according to quarterly reports from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment. Of these, about 383,000 children are in daycare (ages 0 to 4), 458,000 in after-school care (ages 4 to 12), and 75,000 with paid host parents.
Children typically attend childcare two days per week. On average, this equates to 91.6 hours per month for daycare and 43.1 hours for after-school care. Daycare accounts for 59 percent of total care hours, after-school care 33 percent, and host parenting 8 percent.
Although most freelancers in the sector have returned to payroll jobs, staffing shortages remain a concern. Some groups remain closed due to lack of staff. As in other parts of the healthcare sector and broader economy, labor shortages continue to pose a significant business risk.
Among the 17,000 freelancers working in childcare at the end of 2024, about 7,500 were host parents—a group less vulnerable to enforcement due to their independent operations, often carried out from their own homes without direct supervision. Still, the number of host parents is declining as well, though for different reasons. The host parenting sector has shrunk by 40 percent over the past five years, even as daycare and after-school care grew by 12 and 17 percent, respectively.
In April 2025, the Dutch government announced plans to reverse the decline in host parenting. It is also moving ahead with its proposal to make childcare nearly free for working parents, a policy expected to significantly boost demand.
