The Dutch labour market is mobile and closed at the same time. A large flow of employees changes employer every quarter, but that flow circulates in the flexible layer of temporary, on-call and agency contracts. The permanent core, where the experience sits that employers say they cannot find, barely moves. Our conclusion: whoever waits for applications recruits in the flexible layer. The permanent core does not apply. It has to be approached, with certainty from the first day.
A steady flow, back to normal
CBS measures every quarter how many employees work for a different employer than they did a quarter earlier. The flow is large and remarkably stable. Since 2013 it has moved within a narrow range, rising through the tight years of 2021 and 2022 and falling back since. The peak of those years has fully unwound: the current pace sits almost exactly where it was in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic.
Within the year, the flow keeps a rhythm. In most years the busiest quarter falls after the summer.
The circuit runs through the flexible layer
Employees on a flexible contract change employer far more often than permanent staff. Flexible contracts cover a minority of all jobs, yet they supply most of the people who switch. And after the move, the large majority of switchers is on a flexible contract again, including many who arrived with a permanent one.
Seen from a distance, that looks like a fluid labour market. Up close, it is a closed circuit: movement comes out of the flexible layer and returns to it. The much larger permanent core hardly takes part.
A move costs the permanent contract
The same table explains why the core stays put. Of the permanent employees who leave, only a small minority steps straight into a new permanent contract. Most start on a temporary one. For someone with an open-ended contract, changing employer nearly always means giving up certainty first, and that price never shows up in a salary comparison.
So the core stays where it is. Employers keep that lock in place themselves: most new hires start on a flexible contract, also the ones who came from a permanent job. Part of the shortage of permanent staff that employers feel is a shortage they organise.
Who moves
Age divides the market more than anything else. Young employees change employer far more often than anyone, the middle group moves at around the average pace, and older employees rarely move at all. Women switch slightly more often than men.
What this does not show
The table counts employees only. The self-employed fall outside it, and someone who moves from a job to their own business, or the reverse, does not count as a switcher. The figures come from the Dutch labour force survey, which was redesigned in 2021, so detailed comparisons across that break are not clean.
Most importantly, CBS does not record through which channel a switcher found the new job. That the vacancy does not reach the permanent core is our reading of the flows, not a CBS measurement. The data does limit that reading: if the core really moved through the open market while keeping its certainty, the flow from permanent to permanent would be much larger than it is. A clear rise in that flow would weaken our conclusion.
What you can do
- Treat replacement as a continuous task. A steady share of any workforce leaves for another employer every quarter.
- Use the open vacancy for flexible, young and starting staff. That is the part of the market that moves and responds.
- Approach experienced permanent staff directly. They do not read job ads, because they have no reason to.
- Offer a permanent contract from the first day. It removes the exact barrier that keeps the core in place, and few employers offer it.
- Plan active recruitment for the months after the summer, when the flow is usually at its busiest.