Over half a million employees earn one thoussand guilders

At the end of 2000, 570 thousand employees in the Netherlands had a job with an annual wage of at least 100 thousand guilders (45,378 euro). This is the equivalent of eight percent of all employees. Only forty thousand employees earn more than 100 thousand euro (more than 220,371 guilders).

Employees by wage class, 2000

Men in the private sector

So who earns 100 thousand guilders or more? Most of these employees are men with a full-time job in the private sector. The composition of the group is very different from the average group of employees mainly because it contains relatively very few women. Only ten percent of employees earning more than 100 thousand guilders are women, while 43% of all employees in the Netherlands are female. This under-representation of women is connected with the fact that most women have a part-time job.  The proportion of women in the group who earn more than 100 thousand euro is even lower: 5%.

High earners by sector, 2000

Over seventy percent of employees work in the private sector. The remainder of the jobs are equally divided between the state subsidised sector and the government sector. Most high earning employees are also found in the private sector, and, to a lesser extent, in the government sector. There are relatively few people with high wages in the state subsidised sector.

Ninety percent of those who earn more than 100 thousand euro work for private sector companies, only five percent work for the government.

Share of high earners per industry branch, 2000

Mineral extraction pays high wages

There are large differences in the proportions of high paid employees between industry branches. The largest share of high paid employees is found in the sector mineral extraction: 43% of employees in this sector earn more than 100 thousand guilders. Financial institutions and energy and water companies also pay relatively many employees high wages. At the other end of the scale we find the hotel and restaurant trade and agriculture and fishery.

Han van den Berg and Job van der Zwan