The number of young men in work outstripped young women for the first time in December 2022, national statistics office CBS said on Thursday.

In total, 75.2% of young women up to the age of 25 had a job as did 77.4% of young men. The figures are far higher than at the start of the coronavirus crisis, when almost 64% of young men and over 70% of young women were in work.

The agency started monitoring different working patterns in 2003.

Many young adults are working while continuing with their education and have jobs of just a few hours a week in a bar or supermarket, CBS chief economist Piet Hein van Mulligen told Dutch News.

‘It is not that young women are working less, just that young men are working even more,’ Van Mulligen said. ‘It seems as if more young men are working in the sectors that need people, such as tech and IT.’

Meanwhile, the CBS said unemployment also fell again in December, hitting 3.5%, the CBS said. In total, 352,000 were officially classed as unemployed.

The jobless figure hit a low of 3.2% in April last year before rising to 3.8% in August and has fallen gradually again since then.