More working Dutch living in poverty; Freelancers twice as likely to struggle

In 2024, 175,000 working people in the Netherlands lived in poverty, 26,000 more than the year before. After fixed expenses, they did not have enough money left for basic needs like food, clothing, and social activities. Freelancers were twice as likely to struggle financially as other working Dutch, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported on Wednesday.

CBS attributed the increase in workers below the poverty line partly to coronavirus support measures, such as the energy allowance, lapsing in 2024. A total of 30,000 workers in the Netherlands lived in poverty for three years or longer in 2024, 1,500 more than the previous year. “This number also rose for the first time after years of decline, but is still significantly lower than in 2020, when 46,000 working people were in long-term poverty,” CBS said.

In 2024, 4.4 percent of freelancers, classified as self-employed workers without employees, lived in poverty. That is over twice as high a percentage than self employed with employees (1.8%) and employees (1.7%).

Long-term poverty is also more common among freelancers than other workers. In 2024, 1.1 percent of freelancers had been living in a household that couldn’t make ends meet for three years or longer, compared to 0.2 percent of employees and 0.4 percent of self-employed with employees.

On average, working poor people earned 25 percent less than the poverty line. This income gap was greater for freelancers living in poverty (33%) and self-employed with employees (37%) than for poor employees (22%).

On average, workers living in poverty faced a greater income shortfall than people with other sources of income, such as welfare benefits. The income shortfall across all households below the poverty line was an average of 19 percent.

CBS also noted that workers living in poverty tend to be younger and have less work experience than the average for all workers. In 2024, 63 percent of the working poor had less than four years of paid employment as their main source of income. For all workers, this figure was 18 percent. Nearly a quarter of workers below the poverty line were under 25 in 2024, compared to 9 percent for all workers.

Workers in poverty were also more likely to live alone or in a single-parent household (67%) than the entire group (25%).