Fewer Dutch company employees changing jobs

Fewer and fewer workers are switching jobs, Statistics Netherlands has reported. Around 3.8 percent of workers changed employers in the second quarter of 2025. This is a significant drop compared to the same quarter in 2022, when 4.7 percent of workers switched jobs. The figures appear to confirm a previously observed trend.

According to Statistics Netherlands, 305,000 employees started a new job in the past quarter, compared with 358,000 three years earlier. The labor market was tightest back then, and since that time, the number of job changers has also declined.

Employees who had only recently started their jobs, as well as people in commercial, business, or logistics roles, were less likely to switch jobs. Despite the overall decrease, commercial positions such as sales staff and jobs in transport and logistics, like drivers, remained among the occupations with the highest turnover.

In addition, 7.3 percent of employees who had been with a particular employer for less than a year started a new job last quarter. According to the statistics bureau, they still changed jobs more often than people who had been with an organization longer.

A spokesperson for AWVN, the Dutch employers’ organization for HR and labor market issues, said earlier that a survey of around 150 large companies and organizations showed that employees across various sectors have become more “settled” due to economic uncertainty, such as the trade tensions caused by U.S. President Donald Trump. He also noted that those who had been looking for a new job in recent years had, by now, mostly already found one.