The number of people with the jobs title ‘secretary’ in the Netherlands has halved since the turn of the century to just 40,000, the Telegraaf said on Monday.

Next Thursday is officially ‘secretaries day’ but they have little to celebrate, the paper said. One in five secretaries has lost his or her job since 2013 and competition for new jobs is extremely fierce, Freek Kalkhoven of the state jobs agency UWV told the paper.

The UWV is due to publish new figures later this week that show how administrative positions are disappearing due to the use of IT. In the banking sector too, administrative positions have been hardest hit by automation.