Employed PhD graduates; labour characteristics

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Sex Margins PhD characteristics Full-time (%)
Total male and female Value Total 73.9
Time since PhD: 5 years or less 74.9
Time since PhD: more than 5 years 73.6
01 Education 53.2
02 Design, arts, language and history 64.1
03 Journalism, social, behavioural sc... 66.0
04 Law, business, administration, trade 79.6
05 Mathematics, physical sciences 76.4
06 Computing 83.3
07 Engineering, manufacturing, con... 79.4
08 Agriculture, veterinary medicine, ... 58.6
09 Health and welfare 74.4
10 Services .
Type of education is unknown .
Lower bound 95% confidence interval Total 73.0
Time since PhD: 5 years or less 72.7
Time since PhD: more than 5 years 72.6
01 Education 45.9
02 Design, arts, language and history 59.8
03 Journalism, social, behavioural sc... 63.4
04 Law, business, administration, trade 76.6
05 Mathematics, physical sciences 74.7
06 Computing 78.8
07 Engineering, manufacturing, con... 76.3
08 Agriculture, veterinary medicine, ... 49.9
09 Health and welfare 72.6
10 Services .
Type of education is unknown .
Upper bound 95% confidence interval Total 74.8
Time since PhD: 5 years or less 76.9
Time since PhD: more than 5 years 74.6
01 Education 60.3
02 Design, arts, language and history 68.1
03 Journalism, social, behavioural sc... 68.6
04 Law, business, administration, trade 82.4
05 Mathematics, physical sciences 78.1
06 Computing 87.0
07 Engineering, manufacturing, con... 82.1
08 Agriculture, veterinary medicine, ... 66.7
09 Health and welfare 76.0
10 Services .
Type of education is unknown .
Sex: male Value Total 82.6
Time since PhD: 5 years or less 84.7
Time since PhD: more than 5 years 82.1
01 Education .
02 Design, arts, language and history 68.5
03 Journalism, social, behavioural sc... 80.6
04 Law, business, administration, trade 83.2
05 Mathematics, physical sciences 82.0
06 Computing 86.6
07 Engineering, manufacturing, con... 84.9
08 Agriculture, veterinary medicine, ... .
09 Health and welfare 85.0
10 Services .
Type of education is unknown .
Lower bound 95% confidence interval Total 81.6
Time since PhD: 5 years or less 82.0
Time since PhD: more than 5 years 81.0
01 Education .
02 Design, arts, language and history 63.0
03 Journalism, social, behavioural sc... 77.1
04 Law, business, administration, trade 79.4
05 Mathematics, physical sciences 80.1
06 Computing 82.2
07 Engineering, manufacturing, con... 82.4
08 Agriculture, veterinary medicine, ... .
09 Health and welfare 82.9
10 Services .
Type of education is unknown .
Upper bound 95% confidence interval Total 83.6
Time since PhD: 5 years or less 87.0
Time since PhD: more than 5 years 83.2
01 Education .
02 Design, arts, language and history 73.6
03 Journalism, social, behavioural sc... 83.7
04 Law, business, administration, trade 86.5
05 Mathematics, physical sciences 83.8
06 Computing 90.1
07 Engineering, manufacturing, con... 87.1
08 Agriculture, veterinary medicine, ... .
09 Health and welfare 86.9
10 Services .
Type of education is unknown .
Sex: female Value Total 62.0
Time since PhD: 5 years or less 65.5
Time since PhD: more than 5 years 60.7
01 Education 42.5
02 Design, arts, language and history 57.8
03 Journalism, social, behavioural sc... 54.5
04 Law, business, administration, trade 73.9
05 Mathematics, physical sciences 64.7
06 Computing .
07 Engineering, manufacturing, con... 63.4
08 Agriculture, veterinary medicine, ... .
09 Health and welfare 65.3
10 Services .
Type of education is unknown .
Lower bound 95% confidence interval Total 60.4
Time since PhD: 5 years or less 62.2
Source: CBS.
Explanation of symbols

Table explanation


This table shows figures on labour characteristics of employed PhD graduates after their PhD-track, by sex and PhD characteristics (time since receiving PhD and discipline).

The figures come from the periodically recurring Careers of Doctorate Holders survey. The study has been ongoing since 2010, and data are available from 2019 onward due to comparability. The target population consists of all individuals who have obtained their PhD at a university affiliated with the Universities of the Netherlands (UNL) since the academic year 1990/’91, who were under the age of 70 at the time of the survey, and who were residing in the Netherlands according to the Basic Registration of Persons (BRP) at that time.

Data available from: 2019.

Status of the figures:
The figures in this table are definite.

Changes as of March 25, 2026:
This table has been replaced with an improved version. Due to a labeling issue, incorrect counts were shown in the breakdown between “Time since PhD: 5 years or less” and “Time since PhD: more than 5 years”. This has now been corrected.

When will new figures be published?
It is not yet clear when the next survey will be carried out, and therefore it is unclear when new data will be published.

Description topics

Full-time
The number of hours that a person works in a standard or average working week is 35 hours or more.
This concerns the total number of hours across all jobs.