A four-day school week, fewer trains, and shorter shop opening hours will increasingly become a reality in the coming years because the working population is shrinking, the Telegraaf said on Tuesday.

In the next five years 2.2 million additional jobs will need to be filled, 90% of which is down to people retiring, becoming unable to work through ill health, or changing careers, according to new figures from Maastricht University.  

“It looks as if are going to have to choose between more immigration or working longer,” Ton Wilthagen, labour market professor at Tilburg university told the paper. Other options, he said, include encouraging people to work more hours, rewarding those who opt to study for jobs in sectors with a shortage of labour or boosting wages for unpopular jobs.

“Our entire economy is going to be affected,” he said. “Our prosperity is at stake. Vital services will be hit and we will all have to get used to poorer service in restaurants.”

The five sectors suffering from the biggest shortages of staff already include healthcare (nurses, pharmacy assistants and lab workers), the civil service, education (childcare workers, classroom assistants and primary school teachers), technology and engineering. 

Between now and 2028, some 1.5 million people will graduate from college or university but many will not be qualified in areas where there is greatest demand, the Maastricht research shows. 

“To solve the shortages of technicians, for example, personnel are already being recruited abroad, and many foreign students with degrees in engineering continue to work in the Netherlands after their studies,” said Maastricht research leader Jessie Bakens.

“But ways must also be sought to interest more Dutch youth in technical studies. The demand for technicians is not only high in the technical sector, but technical skills are also increasingly valued outside of engineering.” 

On Monday the government’s independent advisory body on migration, the Adviesraad Migratie said the Netherlands will need to bring more foreign workers into the country to cope with an aging population.

Some three million extra immigrants would be needed to plug the workforce gaps and pay taxes by 2040, but given that is not a realistic option, people already here will have to work more hours or retire later instead, the council said in its report. 

Expert Paul de Beer told the Volkskrant that some economic activities are only profitable because they rely on cheap, imported labour. “In such cases, labour migration is not only a reaction to the demand for workers,” he said. “The reverse is also true. Certain economic activities can grow because of the availability of cheap foreign workers.”

New government

The four parties currently in talks on forming a new coalition – PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB – want to reduce the number of foreigners coming to the Netherlands to work. 

“Shortages mean making choices,” Wilthagen said. “We can’t solve the problem but we can tackle it. But politicians have to realise how urgent this problem is.”

The OECD last month called on the new cabinet to tackle the labour shortage, and suggested people in the Netherlands should start working longer hours. 

In particular, changes to income tax and supplementary benefits for people on low incomes could help, as would providing more free childcare which the outgoing government had planned to do, the OECD said.