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The number of people relying on welfare in the Netherlands has risen for a third consecutive year, and it is young people whose numbers are climbing fastest. New figures from the national statistics office CBS show the trend shows no sign of reversing.
The figures
At the end of the second quarter of 2026, 413,000 people below the state pension age were receiving welfare, known in Dutch as bijstand, around 4,000 more than a year earlier. It was the twelfth quarter in a row in which the total was higher than a year before, though the figure remains slightly below where it stood before the coronavirus pandemic.
Claims rose across every age group, but by far the fastest among the young. The number of under-27s on welfare rose 5.7 percent from a year earlier to 44,000, and has climbed by about 27 percent since late 2022. By comparison, the 140,000 claimants aged 27 to 45 represented a rise of less than 1 percent, and among those aged 45 up to the state pension age, the 229,000 total edged up only 0.2 percent.
The direction of travel is also visible in the flow of people on and off welfare. For 14 quarters in succession, more people have been starting to claim than leaving, meaning arrivals have consistently outpaced departures.
What welfare is
The Dutch welfare system, or bijstand, is the country’s basic safety net. It is paid by local councils to people of working age who have too little income or savings to live on and who are not entitled to any other benefit. It is, in other words, the support of last resort, which makes a sustained rise in claims a meaningful signal about how people at the bottom of the labour market are faring.
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Why the young stand out
At first glance it may seem surprising that young people are over-represented, given that the Dutch labour market remains relatively tight by historical standards. Part of the explanation is structural. Young people are more likely to end up on welfare specifically because they have little or no work history, and so have not built up an entitlement to other benefits, such as unemployment benefit (WW) or disability benefit (WIA), that older workers can fall back on. When a young person cannot find work or drops out of education, welfare is often the only option available.
It is also worth noting, to keep the figures in perspective, that welfare is not only about joblessness. Around half of all recipients are unable to work because of illness or incapacity, so the numbers reflect health and disability as much as the state of the jobs market.
The wider context
The rise fits with other recent signs that the labour market, while still tight, has begun to cool. Unemployment edged up to 4 percent of the labour force earlier in the summer, having risen slightly from its lows, and economists have been describing a gradual softening rather than a downturn. Councils, which administer welfare and see these cases directly, have for some time been flagging a growing group of young adults turning to bijstand, even during a period of widespread staff shortages.
For the country’s finances and its politics, the trend matters too. It comes as the government’s own forecaster has warned that household purchasing power will dip slightly next year, and as spending on social security is itself the subject of a fierce political debate ahead of the elections in October. A steadily rising welfare caseload, concentrated among the young, is the kind of quiet, structural trend that rarely makes headlines but speaks to how secure people feel at the start of their working lives.