Employed PhD graduates; labour characteristics

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Sex Margins Full-time (%) Professional status Permanent employee (%) Professional status Flexible employee (%) Professional status Self-employed person (%) Employed as researcher (%) Employed in academia (%) Work related to PhD research (%)
Total male and female Value 76.4 81.7 10.5 7.5 73.6 24.4 61.3
Lower bound 95% confidence interval 74.7 80.0 9.3 6.5 71.9 22.6 59.3
Upper bound 95% confidence interval 78.1 83.2 11.9 8.7 75.3 26.2 63.2
Sex: male Value 82.0 81.9 9.1 8.6 77.8 22.9 61.9
Lower bound 95% confidence interval 80.1 79.9 7.7 7.3 75.8 20.9 59.5
Upper bound 95% confidence interval 83.8 83.8 10.8 10.1 79.6 25.1 64.2
Sex: female Value 64.7 81.1 13.4 5.2 65.0 27.5 60.0
Lower bound 95% confidence interval 61.3 78.2 11.1 3.9 61.6 24.2 56.6
Upper bound 95% confidence interval 68.0 83.8 16.1 6.9 68.2 31.0 63.4
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 23, 2026:
Data for 2025 have been added.

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.
Professional status
Classification of the employed labour force into:
Employee
- Permanent
- Flexible
- Self-employed

When a person has more than one job, the job in which most hours are worked, is used.
Permanent employee
An employee with an employment contract for an indefinite period and for a fixed number of hours.
Flexible employee
An employee with an employment contract for a limited period or a flexible number of hours. This includes:
- Temporary employee, permanent prospect
- Temporary employee, >=1 year
- Temporary employee, <1 year
- On-call worker (including permanent and temporary employees with flexible hours)
- Temporary agency worker
- Employee flex, contract unknown.
Self-employed person
A person who works for his/her own account and risk
- in an own company or practice (self-employed entrepreneur), or
- as an owner-manager, or
- in the company or practice of a family member (contributing family worker), or
- as another self-employed person (for example in an independent profession).  
Employed as researcher
A person who indicates in the questionnaire that they perform one or more of the following activities in their primary job:
— Developing new knowledge;
— Devising or developing new products;
— Devising or developing new processes, methods, or systems;
— Leading research projects.
Employed in academia
A person who indicates in the questionnaire that their primary job is in University Higher Education or at a University Medical Center. For this classification, codes 85420 and 86101 from the Standard Industrial Classification (SBI) 2008 were used.
Work related to PhD research
A person who indicates in the questionnaire that their current postdoc appointment or current primary job is partly or strongly related to their PhD research.