The Dutch Say AI Will Help Cut 25,000 Jobs. Their Own Letter Doubts It

The Dutch government wants about 25,000 fewer full-time civil service jobs by 2035, and the headlines have called it an AI-led overhaul. But the government’s own letter to parliament says AI has failed to shrink the state before, and that efficiency alone can cover only about a third of the savings. This is DailyAI’s analysis: the number is real, but the AI label is doing a lot of work.

Die Zahlen

State secretary Eric van der Burg set out the plan on Monday in a progress letter to the Dutch parliament. Central government must save €900 million in 2027, rising to €3.5 billion a year from 2035. The letter calls 25,000 full-time jobs a “rough estimate” of what that means for staff.

For context, the central civil service had 160,016 full-time equivalents at the end of 2025, the letter says. That is about 41% more than in 2018, an increase of 46,500. So the plan would roughly undo half of seven years of growth.

The pain will not be spread evenly. Police and defence are exempt. Many other organisations face cuts of about 20% of staff, some about 45%, and in one case about 60%. Most civil servants work in delivery agencies, the bodies that collect tax, pay benefits and process visas, so a large share of the cuts will land there.

Where AI actually fits

AI is one of several measures in the plan. The others are standardised IT, shared offices with one desk for every two staff, scrapping at least 500 rules a year and cutting advisory bodies, as the government’s announcement lists. The AI part has no number yet. The cabinet says it will publish “ambitious” AI targets and savings plans in the first quarter of 2027.

The letter is also blunt about the limits. It cites the Dutch government’s economic forecaster, the CPB, which assumes about 0.5% a year in genuine efficiency gains. That gets the government to about one third of the savings. The other two thirds need choices about what the state will stop doing, do less of, or do differently. Those choices have not been made. The split by ministry comes in the spring budget update.

Then comes the line that should be read next to every “AI cuts 25,000 jobs” headline. Among the lessons of the past 20 years, the letter lists: do not overestimate the staffing effects of digitalisation and AI. Government processes were digitised and automated, it says, but the promised savings in cost and staff never came. Instead they led to new tasks, more capacity and more hired contractors.

Our view

In our opinion, this is a budget cut with an AI plan attached, not an AI plan that produces a budget cut. That matters, because the two fail in different ways.

If the savings rely on AI, and the AI underdelivers, the risk is that agencies lose staff before the tools work. The letter itself warns that cuts could affect “service, continuity” in delivery. For people in the Netherlands, that means the tax office, benefits agency and immigration service, which NOS notes are not exempt.

There is a demand problem too. ING chief economist Marieke Blom gegenüber Bloomberg that AI can also create work, for example when agencies are flooded with complaints filed by people using AI agents. Previous Dutch cuts, she noted, were followed by more hiring.

None of this means AI cannot help. Research such as the IMF’s work on AI and jobs suggests office roles are among the most exposed. But exposure is not the same as savings, and the Dutch letter is an unusually honest admission of that gap.

Was man sehen sollte

Two dates will show whether the AI label holds up. The spring budget update will say which ministries lose how many jobs. The first-quarter 2027 AI plan will say how much of the €3.5 billion AI is expected to deliver. If that second number is small, the honest headline is about a smaller state, not a smarter one.