A study conducted by Statistics Netherlands shows that, between 2009 and 2011, 10% of businesses moved employment positions from the Netherlands to various other countries.

Significance

This means that, over two years, 18.000 jobs have been transferred elsewhere from Dutch soil.

However, this finding is not as gloomy as it first seems. The study proves that most companies (90%) are still keeping their business at home.

Furthermore, of all the jobs which were relocated abroad, less than half were related to the respective companies' main activity.

Motivations

The study notes that the movement of jobs is probably mostly due to the relatively low cost of work in developing countries.

The job sectors with the highest proportion of relocations were IT and administration.

Manufacturing companies also had a high number of job-relocations, leading to a 2,7% reduction in Dutch manufacturing jobs. This was also the sector which was most likely to move its main business (namely the production of clothes and material goods) abroad.

Destinations

The most prominent countries for relocation were European, with the EU-15 being the most popular. Together with the new EU-12 countries, they constituted nearly 60% of the Netherlands' job relocations.

Aside from Europe, India and Asia also remain popular destinations for companies - potentially due to their low typical salaries.