No continued decline in gender labour force participation gap

© ANP / Roger Dohmen Fotografie
The gender gap in labour force participation has remained virtually the same in recent years. In Q1 2024, 77.1 percent of all men aged 15 to 74 were in paid employment. This was 68.9 percent among women, a difference of more than 8 percentage points, which is the same rate as five years earlier, in Q1 2019. In previous years, the gap continued to narrow, particularly in the first decade of the century. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reports this today.
After an almost continuous increase since 2014, paused only at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the labour force participation rate in 2024 has reached its highest level since the start of this series in 2003. Labour force participation also increased before the onset of the financial crisis in 2008.

Growth was stronger among women than among men. In Q1 2024, the labour participation rate for women was nearly 12 percentage points higher compared with Q1 2004. That increase over 20 years was more than twice as high as among men.

Participation gap particularly declined between 2004 and 2014

Labour force participation among women has increased more than among men. Therefore, the gender gap has continued to narrow over the past twenty years. This fell from 15 percentage points in Q1 2004 to over 8 percentage points in Q1 2024. The decline occurred mainly during the period 2004 to 2013. After that, the gender gap in participation also decreased slightly at first, but not in recent years.


Difference in working hours

Women did catch up with men in terms of the number of hours they were in paid work over the previous ten years. The average working hours of women in employment rose from 25.3 hours per week in Q1 2014 to 27.8 hours in Q1 2024. During this period, average working hours among men were almost continuously around 36 hours per week. This means that women had 8 hours less paid work per week than men in 2024, while in 2014, the difference was more than 10 hours. However, this increase is not reflected in the net labour participation rate.


Gender gap in participation among older people widened

When looking at different age groups, the gender gap in labour force participation has not stabilised among all groups. Among 25 to 65-year-olds, this has narrowed recently, while the opposite was seen among young people. In 2014, the labour force participation rate for men aged 15 to 24 was substantially lower than among their female peers, but the gap has now closed. Moreover, the gap among those aged 65 and over widened as men's labour force participation rose more sharply than for women in the same age group. In Q1 2024, 27.0 percent of all men aged 65 to 74 were in paid employment while among women this was 12.5 percent. Ten years previously, this was 15.0 and 6.8 percent, respectively.

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