HBO graduates will find it more difficult to find a job in the coming years than young people with an MBO-4 diploma or university master’s degree. Job opportunities are especially poor for HBO graduates studying economics and society, who prepare them for a job as a personnel officer or accountant. This is because more people graduate in this field than will be necessary later.
This is evident a study which the Research Center for Education and the Labor Market (ROA) published on Tuesday. “It is not the case that graduates with a mediocre perspective are becoming unemployed en masse,” says ROA researcher Jessie Bakens, who co-wrote the report. “It mainly means that it is more difficult to find a job that matches your studies and level, with the desired employment conditions.” These graduates usually find a job outside their field of study.
In the biennial report, ROA, part of Maastricht University, outlines the labor market prospects of graduates. The researchers compared the expected supply of people with a certain diploma until 2030 against the expected demand for certain employees. This demand is fueled not only by the creation of new jobs, but also by, for example, employees retiring.
The economy is expected to grow less rapidly in the coming years, meaning the number of jobs will increase less sharply than in recent years. The current tightness on the labor market will therefore not increase further, the ROA believes. This will “even decrease” in certain sectors. Young people will notice this first, because unemployment among them will increase.
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Chances
Unemployment among Dutch young people remains low from an international perspective: only in Germany and Switzerland do 15 to 24-year-olds work more often. According to the ROA, the current staff shortages in technology, healthcare and education continue. The job opportunities of young graduates also vary greatly by level of education.
The education level of Dutch graduates has increased in recent years. For about four years now, the share of people with an HBO diploma or university diploma has been larger than that of people with an MBO diploma. The number of new jobs has also increased most for people with college and master’s degrees; this will remain the case in the coming years. Yet people with MBO level 4 now have a better perspective on average than HBO students.
“Not all jobs in the Netherlands can be done by people with a higher education diploma. Because there are fewer MBO-educated people, we see bottlenecks in the jobs they do,” Bakens explains. These shortages could increase if certain manufacturing industries partly return from Asia to Europe, as outlined in geopolitical plans. “Will that industry also come to the Netherlands?” Bakens wonders. “The shortage of technicians will then become even greater.”
‘Farmers’
Job opportunities also vary widely by field of study. For example, someone with MBO-3 who has learned to provide individual healthcare (IG – home care, care for the disabled) has a moderate chance of finding a job. “In healthcare we expect growth in a different type of jobs, for example nurses,” says Bakens. “In addition, relatively many young people are learning to become care assistants.”
Someone who has completed MBO-3, on the other hand, has a good job opportunity with a specialization in food, nature and living environment. The agricultural sector as a whole is indeed shrinking, says Bakens, but not equally everywhere. “The sector is going through a huge transition. This means that jobs can be created again in some, often new, places.” For example, the demand for gardeners is increasing because cities are creating more green areas to protect against the heat.
The demand for gardeners is increasing because cities are creating more green spaces to protect against the heat
The shrinking image only means that many young people no longer opt for training in this direction. “While there is a demand for people,” says Bakens, “not only because some of the farmers who retire need to be replaced, but also because there is a demand for people for sustainable food production, water management and making the Netherlands climate-proof.”
The growth of the education sector will decrease to 0.1 percent per year, compared to an average of 1.3 percent per year between 1996 and 2024. This is because far fewer children are being born. Yet both primary and secondary education still suffer from a major shortage of teachers. Bakens: “The growth of that deficit is only increasing less strongly than before.”
In other sectors, the shortage of personnel threatens to increase sharply in the coming years. In transport and logistics, the ROA expects “very major bottlenecks” in finding loaders, unloaders, shelf stackers, garbage collectors and newspaper deliverers. There is a serious shortage of waiters and bar staff, hairdressers and beauticians, cleaners and kitchen assistants in the service sector.
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