The Dutch economic growth is mainly due to increased government spending. Much more money is going to healthcare and government jobs. Compared to other countries, government spending here forms a large part of the economy.
Over 80 percent of the economic growth was due to government spending, reports the statistics agency CBS. The Dutch economy grew by 1.1 percent in 2024, of which 0.9 percentage point is due to increased government consumption. The remaining 0.2 percentage point consists of exports, investments, and household consumption.
“Without government spending, we would have had hardly any economic growth,” says CBS chief economist Peter Hein van Mulligen. That seems extreme, but it is also because government consumption is growing steadily.
“Other expenses are much more volatile,” says Van Mulligen. “Household and business consumption depends much more on how the economy is doing.” But the growth of government spending is really on the high side, according to the economist.
“Much more is going to healthcare and government jobs,” says Van Mulligen. It concerns spending on healthcare, social security such as allowances and spending on own production, such as civil servants’ salaries. “Just like in other sectors, the demand for employees in the government has increased. The same applies to salaries.”
In the Netherlands, relatively higher government spending
More than a quarter of the Dutch gross domestic product consists of government spending, according to CBS figures. That share has now increased for two years in a row and is at the highest level since 2012.
Compared to surrounding countries, the Netherlands also has a high share of government spending. In Belgium and France, the share is about 24 percent and in Germany and the United Kingdom respectively 22 percent and 21 percent. Within the EU, only Sweden and Finland have a higher percentage than us.
The number of government jobs has steadily increased over the past seven years, reports CBS in another message. The statistics agency calls this the labor volume, measured in labor years. Before that increase, it decreased for seven years. The salaries cost the government more than 97 billion euros. This share has been stable for years, at almost a fifth of total spending.