The increased labour market participation of Dutch students

Since the beginning of the 1980s students' labour market participation in the Netherlands has increased enormously. The first part of this article offers a description of the changed labour market position of students in the Netherlands. It demonstrates that this is the result both of changes in the system of student financing and of an increased use of flexible staffing arrangements by employers. The second part of the paper concentrates on the question whether the displacement of workers with lower levels of education was caused by an increasing labour market participation of students. It finds that the labour market participation of lower educated workers dropped at about the same time as students started to enter the lowest job levels, which were the former stronghold of the lower educated workers. Since many of the jobs at this level ask for part-time or temporary work, students have a competitive advantage in comparison to lower educated workers.