Ageing was supposed to leave fewer workers carrying more pensioners. The pensioners came; the strain did not. The reason is a group many employers still screen out: people in their sixties, who now work far more often than they did in 2010. That is the conclusion that matters for anyone hiring. The fastest-growing source of labour in the Netherlands is older, and it is already on the market.
A puzzle with a plain answer
Every November the CBS counts how many residents live mainly on a pension or a social security benefit for every resident who lives mainly on work. That ratio peaked in 2014, has been lower ever since and has barely moved in recent years. Over the same period the number of pensioners kept rising, in absolute terms and as a share of the population.
Both are true because the number of workers grew faster than the number of pensioners. Much of that growth came from older people. Participation among people in their early sixties rose steeply after 2010, and a growing minority keeps working past the state pension age. The CBS now records the largest share of residents living mainly on paid work this century.
Why people in their sixties stayed
Policy did most of the work. The state pension age has risen in steps since 2013 and is set to rise again in 2028. Early retirement schemes lost their tax support, and the generation that still held rights under them has since passed the pension age. Someone entering their sixties in 2010 could stop well before someone entering them today.
The Netherlands leads Europe on this. Eurostat shows employment among older workers rising faster here than in almost any other member state, from a middling level to well above the EU average. Past the pension age, only Norwegians, Danes and Swedes work more often than the Dutch. Expected working life is now the longest among the neighbouring countries compared.
The plan that counted on even more
The coalition agreement of January 2026 leaned on still more labour from older people, mainly by tying the state pension age fully to life expectancy. The cabinet dropped that plan in May 2026. What remains is a stricter entry test for unemployment benefit. According to UWV it would mostly reach people on temporary, agency and on-call contracts, who earn less and are much younger on average. The measure aimed at ageing is gone; the measure left standing reaches flexible workers.
What this does not show
The ratio counts people, not costs. More pensioners cost more, whatever the ratio does. The benefit side has also been rising again since 2022 as unemployment benefits grew, so a stable total hides a falling pension share and a rising benefit share. The CBS classifies residents by main income: someone who works past the pension age and earns more from work counts as a worker. The labour force survey behind the participation figures changed its design in 2021, and the latest year is provisional. If the inflow into benefits keeps climbing, the reading that ageing has been absorbed weakens.
What you can do
- Check your screening. A filter on age, or on the years someone has left before retirement, removes the group that grew fastest.
- Plan careers on the real horizon. Someone in their early sixties today has more working years ahead than the old pension age suggests; hold the career conversation on that basis.
- If the stricter benefit test comes, expect flexible workers to weigh a permanent contract more heavily. Make the security in your offer explicit.
- To read the labour market of 2027, watch the inflow into unemployment and disability benefits rather than the ageing curve.