Every plan that counts on putting idle young people to work runs into the same fact in the Netherlands: there are hardly any. The share of young people outside both work and education is the lowest in the EU. Our conclusion: activating this group is worth doing for its own sake, but no employer should build a workforce plan on it.
The smallest reserve in Europe
Eurostat measures the share of young people and young adults who are neither working nor in education or training, the group known as NEET. In 2025 the Netherlands had the lowest share of all EU member states, well under the EU average and below Sweden, the runner-up. In 2015 the Dutch share was already low. The tight labour market of recent years has made the group smaller still.
Small and mostly willing
The composition surprises. Only part of the group is unemployed in the strict sense, looking and available. The rest is inactive. Yet asked whether they want to work, most young Dutch people in the group say yes. A minority does not.
So the distance is not about motivation. It sits in circumstances: caring for a family member, health problems, or a gap between what the person can do and what employers ask. In the EU as a whole, a much larger share of the group does not want to work.
What this means for activation plans
The arithmetic is sobering. Even if every willing young person in the group found a job, it would add a small amount of labour, once. That is a reservoir that empties a single time, not a structural source of supply. The Dutch youth labour market is a demand market: nearly everyone who can and wants to take part already does.
For employers who need young talent in volume, the map points elsewhere: to EU countries where the share of young people outside work and education is far above the average.
What this does not show
NEET is not an availability measure. A young person caring for a parent or living with an illness counts, but cannot start tomorrow. The share that wants to work is an upper limit of the reserve, not a pool standing ready. The data do not show how long people stay in the group, and that duration decides how reachable they are. A graduate between jobs for a few weeks counts the same as someone out of view for years. Small groups also move from year to year in the detail, so the country ranking is more reliable than the breakdown. The comparison with 2015 crosses a survey redesign in 2021. If the Dutch labour market loosens sharply, the group can grow again, and our reading would need revisiting.
What you can do
- Do not count on young people outside work as a source of volume. The group is small and already thinned out by the tight market.
- If you do want to reach them, adapt the job, not the pitch: hours that fit around care duties, room for health limits, and training that closes the gap between what they can do and what you ask.
- Look at the young people you already employ. Keeping and developing them adds more than activating a reserve that barely exists.
- For volume, consider recruiting in EU countries with a larger group of young people outside work, and prepare for the language and relocation questions that brings.