The stock of developers is not the market. The Netherlands has more software and application developers than ever, but almost all of them have a job and few change employer in any quarter. Our conclusion: whoever posts a vacancy and waits is fishing in the smallest pond there is. The large market is the stock that does not move this quarter, and it can only be reached by approaching people with a concrete offer.
The stock grows fast, and it does not help
CBS figures on the working population by occupation show the number of software and application developers growing steeply since 2013, and still rising. The broader group of ICT specialists, which also includes system administrators, network specialists and ICT advisers, grew with it.
Yet for employers the market has felt empty for years. That is not an illusion. Nearly all those developers are employed, and people with a job hardly apply.
The flow is the market
CBS publishes how many employees change employer each quarter, but only for the workforce as a whole. Apply that national pace to developers and the addressable market shrinks from the full stock to a small fraction of it. That is our estimate, not a CBS figure.
Inside that flow sits an even smaller core. Only a small minority of all switchers step straight into a new permanent contract. Apply that to developers and the group that changes employer and lands in a permanent role right away is thin, and it is shared among every employer, sector and region in the country.
Demand still matches the flow
The demand side is in the same occupational data. New vacancies for ICT specialists peaked in 2022 and have since fallen back to around the level of the years before the pandemic. They have not fallen far enough to ease the pressure: by our estimate, the vacancies that open each quarter still come close to the number of ICT specialists who move at all. Most of those movers land in a temporary role first.
What this does not show
The working population counts the self-employed too, so part of the developer stock is not on a payroll and falls outside the switching figures. The switching pace is a national average across all occupations; CBS does not publish it for developers. Both effects make our estimate of the flow too high rather than too low: the real flow of available developers is probably smaller.
The vacancy data counts vacancies opened, not unique roles, and it covers the broader ICT group, not developers alone. Every figure here that is not a direct CBS value is our derived order of magnitude. A developer-specific switching rate well above the national average would change the reading.
What you can do
- Size a developer vacancy on the flow, not on the stock: a thin stream nationally, for every employer together.
- Be fast. Developers who move have several options within weeks.
- Win the stock by approaching people, not by advertising.
- Offer a permanent contract from the first day. Few switchers get one, so it stands out at once.