The Netherlands has relatively few international knowledge workers compared to other European countries, despite a surge in high-skilled migration in the last 15 years.

Latest figures from the statistics agency CBS reveal there were 383 million ‘knowledge workers’ born in other countries between 2016 and 2018, representing 4.2 per cent of the total workforce. ‘Knowledge workers’ are defined as anybody with a university-level education, including scientists, lawyers, academics and engineers.

The Netherlands has seen a much smaller increase highly-educated foreign workers since 2003-2005, when they accounted for 3 per cent of the working population.

Back then the country was in line with nations such as Ireland, the UK and Sweden recorded similar figures, but the proportion of ‘knowledge workers’ has risen to 9 per cent in Sweden and Britain and 12 per cent in Ireland.

Two-thirds of Dutch-based ‘knowledge workers’ have top-tier jobs, as managers or technicians, a figure beaten only by Luxembourg and Switzerland, while the Netherlands has the highest proportion of self-employed knowledge workers, making up 20 per cent of the total.

Luxembourg has the most knowledge workers relative to its total working population, accounting for 26 per cent – double the proportion in 2003-2005 and twice as many as second-placed Switzerland.