Labour in the Netherlands has become much more expensive in recent years, faster than in Germany and far faster than in France. Yet when Dutch employers explain why a vacancy is hard to fill, salary expectations are rarely the main reason. Read together, those facts point to one conclusion: paying more does not fix a problem that is about reach and skills. A higher offer helps only once the right candidate is in front of you.
Labour got expensive
The Eurostat labour cost index measures what an hour of work costs an employer, including employer contributions. Between mid-2021 and mid-2025 the Dutch index rose steeply, more than in Germany, Norway and Belgium and well ahead of France and Finland. The climb has not flattened either: the most recent year rose faster than the one before it.
Several forces push at once. Tightness strengthens the bargaining position of workers. The statutory minimum wage went up. And collective agreements caught up, with a delay, with the inflation of 2022 and 2023. In business services that feeds straight into rates for cleaning, staffing, accountancy and legal work.
And still, pay is not the bottleneck
Eurostat also asks companies that recruited IT specialists why vacancies were hard to fill. Among Dutch companies with that problem, salary expectations come up less often than the EU average. The reasons named most are different: too few applications, and applicants missing the required skills.
That combination matters. The price of labour rose sharply, but the problem in filling a vacancy is rarely the price. A higher offer solves a vacancy where the candidate exists, is reachable, has the right skills, and the only open question is money. For most vacancies that is not the situation. There, bidding higher is an expensive way to keep the same problem.
What this does not show
The question on hard-to-fill vacancies covers IT specialists only, and it asks employers, not candidates. Employers may underestimate how often pay is the real reason a candidate never applies. The labour cost index is an average for the whole business economy; in single occupations costs can have risen faster or slower. The index also measures cost per hour, not take-home pay. If a later survey shows salary moving to the top of the list of reasons, this reading no longer holds.
What you can do
- Diagnose before you raise. Ask why the vacancy is stuck: are there no applicants, do they lack the skills, or do they drop out over money?
- Raise the offer only for the last case. If candidates leave over salary, a higher offer works. If nobody applies, it changes nothing.
- Work on reach when applications are scarce. Approach people who are not looking, rather than waiting for responses to an advertisement.
- Reconsider requirements when skills are missing. Separate what someone must bring on day one from what they can learn on the job.
- Check the pay of your own staff. People who have not had an adjustment since 2021 are probably behind the market, and they are the ones a competitor will approach next.