Signal Net migration above 100,000 a year; natural increase negative

Summary

Scenarios from the statistics office CBS and the demographic institute NIDI indicate that migration, above all, will drive Dutch population growth in the coming decades. Net migration has comfortably exceeded 100,000 people a year in recent years, although a slight decline is anticipated. Natural increase, the balance of births over deaths, turned negative several years ago. The report breaks the increase down into labour, knowledge, study and asylum migration and traces it to the profile of a wealthy country with low fertility and strong demand for foreign workers. This migration-led growth is expected to result in roughly 42 per cent of the workforce having a migration background around 2050.