The catch-up in Dutch collectively agreed wages is behind us. Growth peaked in 2024 and has slowed since, and the eurozone is cooling the same way. For employers that changes what wins a candidate. The inflation argument that made pay the easy part of every negotiation has run out, and the difference now sits more in hours, security and working conditions than in the size of the structural raise.
Past the crest
During the catch-up years the pay paragraph practically wrote itself. Inflation supplied the argument and the tight labour market supplied the pressure. The CBS series on collectively agreed wages shows the result: a sharp rise through 2023, a peak in 2024, and a clear descent through 2025 and into 2026. The current pace is approaching the level from before the inflation shock, though it still sits above it.
Europe cools along
The European Central Bank follows negotiated wages in the currency area with its own wage tracker, fed by agreements from a group of member states that includes the Netherlands. That tracker points to slower wage growth in 2026 than in 2025, and describes the movement as stabilising, normalising wage pressure. Dutch agreed wages still rise faster than the eurozone average, but both are falling and the gap is narrowing.
Why the pressure faded
Wage demands ran on inflation and on tightness. The correction for the inflation of 2022 and 2023 has largely been made, and labour market tightness is off its peak. With both fading, the pressure on the structural raise fades. Labour remains expensive after the catch-up of recent years, but the pace at which it gets more expensive is dropping.
That shifts the field. When every employer offered a large raise because inflation demanded it, the raise said little about the employer. Now that raises are converging again, what sets an offer apart is the rest of the package: contract security, hours that fit, the room to work from home, development, the quality of the manager. Earlier work on salary in this field pointed the same way: the offer counts, but rarely on its own.
What this does not show
Collectively agreed wages are negotiated wages, not earned wages. Promotions, bonuses and incidental increases fall outside them, so what an individual actually earns can move faster or slower. The ECB tracker looks ahead, covers only part of the eurozone workforce and is revised as new agreements arrive; the bank itself says it does not follow the official negotiated wage series precisely. The Dutch series and the European tracker measure different things and are compared here only by direction. A fresh rise in inflation would revive the inflation argument and overturn this reading.
What you can do
- Drop the inflation of 2022 as an argument, in either direction. A raise negotiated on old prices no longer persuades anyone.
- Benchmark offers against what comparable employers pay now, not against the collective agreement alone. Agreed wages are a floor, not the market.
- Put the package on paper. Spell out hours, security, flexibility and development as explicitly as the salary.
- Check the pay of people you hired during the catch-up years. Their expectations were set in a different market; talk to them before a competitor does.
- If you recruit across the border, look again. With Dutch and European wage growth converging, the comparison with neighbouring countries is becoming realistic.