The number of flexible employees in the Netherlands reached nearly 2 million in 2018, according to data from Statistics Netherlands.

Statistics Netherlands and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) jointly reported these figures on the basis of a joint analysis of the latest data on permanent and flexible work in the Netherlands.

The report analysed data for the number of flexible employees over the past 15 years, showing that the number of flexible employees stood at 1.1 million in 2003.

Meanwhile, the number of freelancers grew from over 630,000 in 2003 to 1.1 million in 2018.

The largest groups of flexible workers are now self-employed workers who offer their own services or work (28%), followed by on-call workers (18%).

The forms of flexible work that have seen the biggest proportional increase in the past 15 years are employees with a permanent contract with no fixed hours, temporary employees without fixed hours and on-call workers. Meanwhile, over the past year, the number of temporary employees with the prospect of a permanent contract grew the most (12%).