Netherlands - Action Plan for Green and Digital Jobs
The Action Plan for Green and Digital Jobs was adopted by Government of the Netherlands in 2023. The Action Plan includes measures to address labour market challenges in sectors with jobs that are important for the climate and the digital transition. The Action Plan contains the following priorities:
Strong technical education and technology promotion.
Cooperation between education and business.
Offering education more in line with the needs of employers.
Exploration of how projects within shortage sectors, including technology, can benefit even more be stimulated and strengthened within mandatory social service.
The measures of the Strategy are formulated based on four pillars:
- Increase inflow in STEM education.
- Retaining and increasing technical employees in technology and IT.
- Labour productivity enhancing innovations.
- Strengthening governance and reducing fragmentation of initiatives.
Measures related to the development of digital skills:
- Technology promotion in primary and secondary education
- Increasing hybrid teachers through employee exchanges
- Hybrid vocational education through innovative hubs
- Labour market focused on skills (project Skillful with Skills, Platform Learning Overview, National Life Long Learning catalysator)
- Increasing inflow from specific targetgroups (Coalition Women in Tech, Taskforce IT)
- Scale up successful public private partnerships in vocational education
The Netherlands is strategically addressing the green and digital job market by focusing on strengthening technical education, fostering collaboration between education and business, and enhancing digital skills development over next 10 years.
Strategy Details
Joint responsibility, commitment and co-financing of public and private partners. Government is commited to:
- Investment in sector plans - 150 million euros structurally for domain science and technology.
- Investment in practice-oriented research - 100 million euros.
- Increase (lateral) inflow, limit dropouts and study switches and prevent leakage after graduation - structural 14 million euros for higher vocational education courses in the technology sector.
- Strengthen career orientation and guidance in secondary vocational education - structurally 33 million euros.
The Strategy has been developed by the Government of the Netherlands, started with the three departments (Ministry of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment).
