Employment indicator; to sector/branches

The employment indicator is a sentiment indicator for the Dutch private sector regarding the total employment of enterprises. When assessing the results, it can be assumed that the more optimistic or pessimistic the entrepreneurs are, the more the value of business confidence will deviate positively or negatively from the zero line. A positive figure for the indicator indicates an expansion of the workforce, a negative figure indicates a shrinking workforce.

The employment indicator in the total Dutch private sector is a weighted average of the confidence indicators of the underlying sectors/industries, which together form a representative reflection of the Dutch business community from an economic viewpoint.

The aggregation ‘all enterprises (no finance or energy)’ includes all available branches questioned in the Business Survey Netherlands. Because not every branch is questioned monthly, this aggregation will only have data available for the first month of each quarter. The aggregation ‘C industry, H-S services and 45+47’ includes all monthly questioned branches and serves as a subtotal of the monthly questionnaire.

Data available from: January 2012.

Status of the figures: The results are provisional during the reporting year. The results will be declared final in the first month following the reporting year.

Changes as of February 5th 2026: Figures of January 2026 have been added. The publication strategy has been adjusted; starting in January 2026, the newly added seasonally adjusted results for the calendar year will be "provisional." These results will be adjusted in January of the following year and then finalized.

When will new figures be published? Figures of February 2026 are expected to be published the 26th of February 2026. Seasonally adjusted results for all periods before January 2026 will be adjusted once on February 26, 2026. This is in line with the new method, where the results are only finalized after seasonal adjustment has been performed based on results over a full number of years.