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Tech layoffs are part of the Dutch market story in early 2026, but they are not the whole story. The biggest headline so far has come from ASML, which said in January it would cut 1,700 jobs, roughly 3.8% of its workforce, even as it reported strong AI-driven demand and raised its 2026 sales outlook to €34 billion to €39 billion.
That combination matters: some companies are reducing headcount, but not always because technology demand is collapsing. In some cases, they are restructuring while still investing in core capability.
Layoff headlines do not automatically mean hiring has become easy
The clearest risk for employers is overreading layoff news. The latest official UWV baseline still shows a sizeable Dutch ICT labour market: in Q2 2025 there were nearly 23,000 ICT vacancies and 553,000 people working in ICT occupations.
UWV’s current sector summary says tightness for ICT professionals has decreased, but remains high. So while the market is less overheated than before, the data does not support the idea that software talent has suddenly become easy to hire in early 2026.
That is because layoffs tend to be concentrated, not evenly spread across all roles. ASML’s cuts were tied to management layers, while Reuters reported continued AI-related order strength at the same time.
For employers hiring software engineers, platform specialists, cloud talent, or other technical profiles, that distinction matters. A company cutting jobs in one part of the business does not necessarily create a broad new supply of candidates for the roles you need most.
What layoffs change for employers
Layoffs can still shift the market at the margins. They may increase candidate openness, bring more people into active search, and reduce some of the urgency employers faced at the peak of the market.
But the underlying issue remains fit. UWV’s latest employer research, published in February 2026, found that 45% of vacancies are still considered difficult to fill and 58% of employers still feel the impact of labour-market tightness.
Among employers with hard-to-fill vacancies, 87% said too few people respond, 64% cited a skills mismatch, and 36% pointed to salary expectations.
For software hiring, that means a few layoff announcements do not erase the structural mismatch between employer demand and available talent.
Companies may see somewhat more movement in the market, but specialist hiring can still remain difficult if the role is too narrowly defined, the process is too slow, or the package is not competitive enough.
In practice, layoffs may improve access to talent slightly, but they do not remove the need for good hiring discipline.
The Dutch tech market is uneven, not weak
The bigger early-2026 picture is mixed. Alongside layoff and restructuring news, the Dutch tech ecosystem is still showing scale and investment.
The State of Dutch Tech 2026, published in February, reported 11,301 active tech companies in the Netherlands and €2.64 billion in venture capital raised in 2025.
Meanwhile, CBS reported that 22.7% of Dutch companies with 10 or more employees used AI in 2024, up nearly 9 percentage points from 2023.
These are not the numbers of a market that has stopped investing in technology. They point instead to a market where some firms are cutting, some are consolidating, and others are still building.
For hiring teams, tech layoffs in the Netherlands are real, and they may create tactical opportunities in parts of the market. But they do not mean software hiring has suddenly become easy.
In early 2026, the market looks more selective, more uneven, and more role-specific than before. Employers that move clearly and realistically are still likely to outperform those that assume layoff headlines alone will solve their hiring problems.
