Netherlands
Profile written September 2026 · figures updated nightly
Where things stand
The latest published reading for each measure, with the last five years beside it.
the ECB's rate, which the Netherlands has shared since 1999
01Structure
The Netherlands is organised around being Europe's gateway: Rotterdam is the continent's largest port, Schiphol one of its largest cargo airports, and a large share of Dutch activity consists of moving, storing, processing and financing goods on their way somewhere else.1 Industry accounts for a little over a tenth of value added, concentrated in chemicals, food processing and high-end equipment.
One firm illustrates how narrow the peaks of that structure can be. ASML, in Veldhoven, is the only supplier of the extreme-ultraviolet lithography machines on which the most advanced semiconductors depend,2 which puts a Dutch company — and Dutch export controls — at the centre of the technological competition between the United States and China.
02Trade and exposure
Exports amount to over four fifths of GDP, one of the highest ratios in the world for an economy of this size, and a substantial share of them are re-exports: goods imported through Rotterdam and shipped onward with little processing. The trade surplus is correspondingly large, in the order of a hundred billion euros a year.1
That makes the Netherlands a direct instrument of European trade rather than a participant in it. A slowdown in German industry, a shift in global shipping routes or a change in export-control policy reaches Dutch output quickly and in volume.
03Energy and resources
For half a century the Groningen field made the Netherlands a gas producer and exporter, and gas revenue a pillar of the public finances. Production there was wound down after induced earthquakes damaged homes across the province, and the field has been closed.1 The country now imports seven tenths of the energy it uses, much of its gas arriving as LNG through the same port infrastructure that serves the rest of north-west Europe.
The consequence is a reversal of role: a country that once set gas prices for its neighbours now pays them, and the fiscal windfall has become a gap. Offshore wind in the North Sea is the main replacement being built.
04Labour and demography
The Dutch labour market is among the tightest in Europe: more than eighty per cent of 20- to 64-year-olds are in work, and youth unemployment is below nine per cent. Part-time work is more common than anywhere else in the European Union, which means a high employment rate coexists with relatively few hours worked per person.
Housing is the binding constraint on labour supply rather than people: a severe shortage has pushed prices and rents up faster than incomes, and household debt, largely mortgage debt, is among the highest in the euro area as a share of output.1
05Public finances
Dutch public debt is well under half of GDP, one of the lowest ratios in the currency area, and deficits have been small. The larger fiscal fact is private: the funded occupational pension system holds assets exceeding twice the size of the economy,1 and is being moved from defined-benefit to defined-contribution arrangements under a reform whose transition runs through the second half of the decade.
Assets on that scale make Dutch pension funds significant buyers of long-dated bonds across the euro area, so the reform's pace matters for interest rates well beyond the Netherlands.
06Money and prices
The Netherlands has set no policy rate of its own since 1999; the rate shown above is the European Central Bank's. The Dutch economy has tended to run tighter than the euro-area average, with a lower unemployment rate and higher wage growth, so the common rate has often been looser than Dutch conditions alone would call for.
The transmission runs mainly through mortgages and pension-fund liabilities: a change in long-term rates moves the funding position of the pension system and the affordability of housing at the same time.
07What the models expect
These are computed on this site from each series' own history, and are nobody's official projection. The bar is the range the figure lands in half the time; the dot is the central path.
Replayed from past origins on today's revised figures, the same baseline was usually off by 0.74 on consumer price inflation, 2.05 on real gdp, 0.12 on unemployment rate, 0.60 on central bank policy rate, 3.27 on government debt.
08Structural indicators
The figures behind the sections above. They move by a point or two a year, so each carries the year it was measured.
| Measure | Value | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Industry, share of gross value added | 11.7% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Exports, share of GDP | 81.6% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Energy import dependency | 70.6% | 2024 | Eurostat |
| R&D spending, share of GDP | 2.3% | 2024 | Eurostat |
| Employment rate, ages 20–64 | 83.4% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Youth unemployment rate | 8.6% | Jul 2026 | Eurostat |
| Government deficit | −1.6% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Pension fund assets, share of GDP | >200% | 2026 | sector estimates |
09Sources and method
Live figures: Eurostat, Bank for International Settlements. Each is fetched nightly and validated before publication; the delivery report on /status/ says how old every one of them is. Profile written 2026-09-11, next review September 2027.
- Rotterdam, re-exports, the end of Groningen, pension assets, household debt and housing — Netherlands Economy 2026; OECD Economic Outlook 2026/1, Netherlands; ING, the Dutch economy in 2026
- ASML's position in extreme-ultraviolet lithography — Netherlands Economy 2026