Freelancer wages nearly 50% lower than staff employee earnings

Freelancers and other workers with a flexible employment relationship on average earn 48 percent less per hour than employees with a permanent contract, Statistics Netherlands reported on Thursday.

This mainly has to do with differences in background characteristics - flexible employees are on average younger and less educated, according to the stats office. If these characteristics are taken into account, freelancers earn 7 percent less than their permanently employed counterparts.

The wage differences between flexible workers and permanent employees vary considerably between the various types of flexible work. On-call workers earn 58 percent less than permanent employees. But if background characteristics are taken into account, the wage difference is 3 percent. For temporary workers, the wage difference without adjustment for background characteristics is 37 percent, with correction it is 13 percent.