Workers' retirement age nearing 66

© Hollandse Hoogte / Patricia Rehe
A total of 86 thousand Dutch employees retired in 2023. The average retirement age was 65 years and 11 months, up by 3 months relative to 2022. This is evident from new figures released by Statistics Netherlands (CBS).

Nearly three-quarters of workers aged 65 or older at retirement

Since 2013, the average retirement age of workers has more or less kept pace with the applicable state pension entitlement age (AOW). In part due to this increase, the retirement age of workers is also increasing. Only in 2021 was the average retirement age in the Netherlands slightly lower than in the previous year. In 2023, 74 percent of workers were aged 65 or over when they retired. Ten years previously (in 2013) this was 43 percent, and in 2003 only 14 percent were aged 65 or older when they retired. At that time, people could still make use of early retirement schemes, which largely stopped after 2006. In 2003, nearly three quarters of workers were younger than 62 at retirement. In 2023, this was less than 6 percent.


More than half of retired people were part of the labour force

Over 200 thousand people retired in 2021. In the year before retirement, 57 percent of them were receiving wages from an employer or income from their own business as their main source of income, while over a quarter were receiving social benefits. These are usually terminated when people reach the state pension age.

Sixteen percent of retired people had no income of their own in the year before they retired; these were mostly women reaching state pension age. Due to the increased labour participation of women in particular, the share of those without an income has decreased by 12 percentage points over the previous 10 years (i.e. by nearly half). By contrast, the share of people coming from employment has increased by 11 percentage points.


No increase in number of retirees

After relatively sharp increases in the number of retired people in 2020 and 2021 by around 50 thousand a year, the number stabilised in 2022 and 2023 at just under 3.3 million. As a result of population growth, the share of retired people among the total population decreased slightly to 18.3 percent in 2023. This was even more true for the share of retirees among those aged 55 and over. This has decreased almost continuously every year since the beginning of this century, mainly due to increased labour force participation among older people. In 2023, less than 54 percent of people aged 55 and over in the Netherlands were retired compared to more than 62 percent at the beginning of this century.