Women in NL working full time more often

The proportion of women on the Dutch labor market who work full-time is on the rise, though slowly. Last year 27 percent of women worked 35 hours a week or more, compared to 25 percent in 2016. In the same period, the proportion of full-time male workers decreased slightly from 74 to 72 percent. Just over half of the total work force in the Netherlands worked full-time last year, Statistics Netherlands reported on Thursday.

In 2019 the Netherlands counted 9 million working people. 4.6 million of them worked full-time — 35 hours a week or more. The average working week was 31 hours. That has been relatively stable for a decade, according ot the stats office.

Self-employed persons are more likely to work longer hours than employees, though this difference is the biggest when it comes to women. 41 percent of female entrepreneurs worked the full 35 hours or more per week last year, compared to 24 percent of female employees. About a third of self-employed, both male and female, worked over 40 hours a week last year, compared to 3 percent of employees. 

The top 5 professions with the most full-time workers are managers at 85 percent, IT professions at 77 percent, technical professions at just under 77 percent, public administration and security- and judicial professions at 68 percent, and agricultural professions at 67 percent. Managers and agricultural workers are most like to put in more than 40 hours a week.