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As of March 2026, the Dutch software hiring market looks calmer than it did at its peak, but it is still not an easy market for employers.
The latest official figures point to a more selective environment rather than a weak one: vacancy pressure has eased, yet specialist hiring remains difficult, and employers are still dealing with shortages, fit issues and changing talent expectations.
Because the newest full official datasets still largely report on 2025, the clearest way to read the market in early 2026 is to use those figures as the latest confirmed baseline.
The market has cooled, but demand is still there
The latest available UWV data shows that software and ICT demand in the Netherlands remains meaningful. In the second quarter of 2025, there were nearly 23,000 ICT vacancies in the Netherlands, and 553,000 people were working in ICT occupations. At the same time, the number of ICT professionals receiving unemployment benefits had risen to more than 5,100 by February 2025.
That mix suggests a market with more movement than during the tightest period, but not one where employers can assume hiring has suddenly become easy. UWV’s own summary is that labour-market tightness for ICT professionals has decreased, but is still high.
For employers in March 2026, that points to a market that is more targeted rather than soft. Companies may be hiring more carefully than before, but demand has not disappeared in roles tied to product delivery, infrastructure, digital capability and technical growth.
A calmer market does not remove competition for strong candidates; it mainly changes where that competition is felt most.
Specialist roles remain difficult to fill
The biggest hiring issue is still fit. UWV’s latest employer research, published in February 2026 and based on 2025 fieldwork, shows that 45% of vacancies are still considered difficult to fill, while 58% of employers say they continue to feel the impact of labour-market tightness.
Among employers dealing with hard-to-fill vacancies, 87% say too few people respond, 64% cite a skills mismatch, and 36% point to salary expectations as a factor.
For software hiring, those numbers matter because they reinforce a familiar pattern: the challenge is often not just the number of applicants, but whether applicants actually match the role.
In practice, that means specialist hiring can stay difficult even when the broader market feels less overheated.
Employers may see more availability than before, but still struggle to hire for roles that require a narrow combination of technical depth, business context and proven experience.
AI adoption and tech growth are creating mixed signals
The wider Dutch tech market is also giving mixed, but still active, demand signals. Statistics Netherlands reported in December 2025 that one in six companies in the Netherlands used AI in 2025, double the share from two years earlier.
At the ecosystem level, the State of Dutch Tech 2026 reported that the Netherlands had 11,301 active tech companies and attracted €2.64 billion in venture capital in 2025.
Those figures do not mean every company is hiring aggressively in early 2026, but they do show that the underlying market remains active enough to support continued demand in software, data, infrastructure and AI-related work.
For employers, the message in March 2026 is not that the market is booming across the board. It is that the market is uneven.
Some businesses are still investing, scaling and building around AI and digital capability, while others are moving more cautiously.
For SoftwareSearch, that is the key point: the Dutch software hiring market is no longer uniformly hot, but it is still competitive where specialist talent is concerned.
