Employees in the Netherlands with a permanent employment contract are more likely to experience work-related mental fatigue symptoms than employees with a flexible contract, according to data from the CBS (Statistics Netherlands).

The data found that in 2017, 17% of permanent employees complained about mental fatigue, compared to 14% of flexible workers.

Among flexible workers, temporary agency workers were more than twice as often exhausted due to work (20%) than stand-by or substitute employees (9%).  Meanwhile fewer self-employed without personnel report fatigue symptoms (8%) than self-employed with personnel (11%).

The overall percentage of employees who complain about mental fatigue has seen an increase as 16% of employees between the ages of 15 and 75 indicated they experienced work-related mental fatigue at least several times per month in 2017. This percentage stood at 13% in 2015.

Self-employed persons are also reporting more mental fatigue due to work (burnout complaints), although the increase is smaller than among employed persons: 9% in 2017 versus 8% in 2015.

Almost all age groups reported more complaints of fatigue, 65 to 74-year-old employees in particular. 

At nearly 20%, employees between the ages of 25 and 35 were most affected by work-related mental fatigue. Among the self-employed, this applied to 35 to 44-year-olds in particular with a share of just under 11%.

The most common complaint is feeling drained at the end of a working day, with 30% of the employed and 20% of the self-employed experiencing this several times per month or more often.