Government

Supervision grows twice as fast as the state

September 2026

15 min read

Seven Dutch regulators that have kept the same form since 2010 grew from 2,730 to 4,772 full-time staff, a rise of 75%. The data protection authority went from 79 to 312, the mines inspectorate from 57 to 188, the healthcare authority from 254 to 521. The financial markets regulator AFM grew 70% and the central bank DNB 54%. The central government as a whole employed 160,016 full-time staff at the end of 2025 against 114,328 at the end of 2010, up 40.0%. The whole Dutch economy grew 19.6% in full-time years over the same period. Inside the central government, inspection work grew 33.5% between 2021 and 2025, against 22.0% for all staff. The growth tracks new legal duties: the GDPR in 2018, online gambling in 2021, the Groningen earthquakes, and new European financial rules. The Jetten cabinet books €1.4bn of savings on the government apparatus in 2030. The CPB, the government's own forecaster, counts €0.2bn of it and calls the rest implausible while no tasks are dropped. Growth already stalled in 2025: the competition authority shrank, the health inspectorate shrank, the healthcare authority stood still, and the central government added 1.9%.

Ageing without a benefit wave

September 2026

12 min read

In November 2025 the Netherlands counted 55.6 benefit recipients for every 100 people whose main income is work: 39.6 on a pension and 16.0 on a social security benefit. In 2014 the figure was 63.6. Since 2001 the country gained 940,000 pensioners and their share of the population rose from 15.1% to 18.6%, but the number of workers grew faster, from 7.14 million in 2014 to 8.51 million in 2025. That growth is largely older people. Of those aged 60 to 65, 36.9% worked in 2010 and 69.5% in 2025. Of those aged 65 to 70 the share went from 12.1% to 29.5%. The share of 55 to 65 year olds living mainly on a pension fell from 18.9% in 2006 to 2.9% in 2025, while the state pension age rose from 65 to 67. The cabinet counted on still more supply from tying the pension age one-to-one to life expectancy, then dropped that plan on 26 May 2026. What remains, a stricter entry test for unemployment benefit, would exclude about 12% of new claimants according to UWV, half of them on temporary contracts.