The Dutch labour market is cooling, but the workshop has hardly noticed. When employers name their hardest vacancy, technical occupations come first by a wide margin, ahead of care. Our conclusion: the shortage is an occupation, not a sector. Anyone hiring a fitter, welder or engineer competes with several sectors at once for the same small pool, and the national story of a looser market does not apply.
The hardest vacancy is technical
In its autumn 2025 employer survey, UWV asked employers which occupation was hardest to fill at their site. Technical occupations led clearly: fitters, welders, milling and lathe operators, CNC operators, carpenters, bricklayers and engineers. Care and welfare followed at a distance, then administrative and financial roles.
The fitter does not top the list of a single sector. Employers in construction, manufacturing, transport, retail and wholesale all name fitters among their hardest vacancies. Shortages are usually described by sector. This one has a job title.
Construction moves against the trend
Construction is the only sector where the share of hard-to-fill vacancies rose since 2023, and most of its vacancies are now hard to fill. Manufacturing follows. Eurostat vacancy rates confirm the picture: construction and professional and technical services, which include engineering firms, sit well above the economy-wide rate and above their pre-pandemic level.
Employers point first to a lack of applicants, then to missing skills and the specialist nature of the work. Most employers with recruitment problems also say others are fishing in the same pool. Because the same technical occupations top the list in many sectors, that pool is smaller than each sector assumes.
A cooling market that skips technical work
Nationally, the share of hard-to-fill vacancies has fallen back to the level of 2019. Within technology the picture splits. Software roles are normalising: according to CBS, far fewer ICT employers now name staff shortages as a constraint than in 2022. Physical technology moves the other way, and many construction employers expect next year to be harder still.
Germany shows that this is not inevitable. Its vacancy rates in ICT and manufacturing are far below the Dutch level, and even German construction sits well under Dutch construction. Where German demand for technical staff moved with the cycle, Dutch demand stayed nearly flat. The Dutch technical shortage is a Dutch profile.
What this does not show
The UWV survey measures what employers say, not how long vacancies actually stay open. Agriculture and temporary staffing firms were left out. No vacancy rate by occupation exists, so sector rates serve as a proxy and mix technical with other roles. The German comparison covers sectors, not occupations. If technical vacancy rates start falling the way software rates did, our reading that the shortage is fixed to the occupation weakens.
What you can do
- Benchmark your offer against the other sectors that hire the same fitters and engineers, not only against your direct competitors.
- Do not use the national cooling story in workforce planning for technical roles. Use your own sector's figures and your own time to hire.
- Widen the intake: people from related trades, older workers and career changers, with a practical training path to close the gap.
- For software roles, review your assumptions. That market has eased, and the terms that were needed in 2022 may no longer be. More on the engineering field.