Bits&Chips first highlighted the preliminary Statistics Netherlands, or CBS, data on August 27. CBS’s underlying release, independently reported by NOS and DutchNews, shows turnover more than doubled from €21.3 billion in 2019 and jobs rose from 23,200 to 43,200. The data supplies a useful baseline for a country whose chip-equipment and specialist-supplier base has become central to the availability of leading-edge processors, memory production tools, and the components that flow into Windows PCs, servers, networking hardware and AI infrastructure.
The headline should nonetheless be read carefully. CBS is measuring the semiconductor-related share of activity at more than 300 companies, including chipmakers, equipment manufacturers, component suppliers and service providers. It is a broader and more revealing measure of industrial capability than tracking one marquee company, but it is also an estimate assembled with a new methodology that CBS says remains under development.
A larger sector, but growth has slowed from its recent peak
CBS’s year-by-year series shows uninterrupted expansion from 2019 through 2025:
| Year | Semiconductor-related turnover | Employment |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | €21.3 billion | 23,200 |
| 2022 | €33.6 billion | 32,900 |
| 2024 | €42.5 billion | 42,100 |
| 2025 | €45.6 billion | 43,200 |
The six-year trend is strong: turnover rose by €24.3 billion, while the workforce increased by 20,000 people. CBS puts the average annual turnover growth rate at 14 percent. Yet the latest annual step was visibly smaller than the years immediately before it. Turnover increased about 7.3 percent between 2024 and 2025, compared with roughly 14.6 percent from 2023 to 2024; jobs grew about 2.6 percent in the latest year after a much larger 14.7 percent increase a year earlier.
That does not establish a downturn. The sector still added €3.1 billion in attributed turnover and 1,100 jobs during 2025. But it means the report should not be used to claim that the Netherlands is adding semiconductor capacity at the same pace seen during the post-pandemic equipment boom. CBS’s figures track revenue activity and jobs, not installed wafer capacity, chip output, research spending, export controls, or order backlogs.
For IT buyers, this is a useful reminder of where the Netherlands’ importance lies. The country is not being measured solely as a producer of finished chips that may eventually appear in a laptop or a Windows Server host. Its position spans equipment, industrial automation, optics, precision components, design work and specialized services—areas where disruption can constrain global hardware supply even when the final chips are fabricated elsewhere.
CBS is estimating “semiconductor intensity,” not simply adding company accounts
The methodological detail is the story’s most consequential finding. CBS began with a Netherlands Enterprise Agency, or RVO, definition of the sector and combined it with company-level statistics. It then estimated each organization’s semiconductor intensity: the share of its turnover and employment judged to be related to chips.
For companies with sufficient domestic export data, CBS uses a list of semiconductor-related product codes to estimate the relationship. Re-exports are excluded, an important boundary in a country with a major trade and logistics role. That exclusion means the headline is intended to reflect Dutch-origin industrial activity rather than the movement of foreign-made technology through Dutch ports and distributors.
The agency then adds a second layer for organizations where trade data is weak, incomplete or irrelevant. A research firm, a chip-design house, or a service provider may export little or no physical equipment. In those cases, CBS assigns more weight to the company’s role in the supply chain and to expert judgments about how semiconductor-focused comparable firms tend to be.
CBS says it gives more weight to the company’s own trade data when that evidence is robust and unambiguous. Where data is sparse, the role-based estimate has greater influence. That makes the 2025 total more sophisticated than an industry-code count, which can miss firms whose semiconductor business is only one division. It also explains why the number is provisional by design, rather than a final audited total comparable with a listed company’s annual revenue.
This matters when comparing the 2025 result with future CBS releases. The agency performed the estimate separately for every year from 2019 through 2025, allowing changes in a company’s trade patterns and place in the supply chain to change its attributed semiconductor share. CBS used one product-code list across the full historical series, which improves internal comparability, but it also says the underlying method is still evolving. A future revision could therefore alter the historical baseline as well as the newest number.
Existing firms account for almost all of the reported expansion
The new figures challenge a simple “startup boom” reading of Dutch semiconductor growth. CBS attributes only about €400 million of the €24.3 billion turnover increase since 2019 to companies newly entering its sector definition. That is roughly 1.6 percent of the total increase.
The balance came from companies already present in the group: some grew in absolute terms, and some allocated a larger share of their activity to semiconductor work. Across the measured firms, the semiconductor-related share of total turnover climbed from 46 percent in 2019 to 51 percent in 2025. In employment, newcomers accounted for roughly 2,000 of the 20,000 additional jobs, leaving the majority of the gain tied to existing businesses and their changing work mix.
That distinction is useful for system builders, procurement teams and investors trying to assess industrial resilience. A sector growing through established equipment makers and their long-standing supplier networks can support deep technical capacity, specialized know-how, and sustained customer relationships. It is different from a wave of small new entrants, which might point to diversification but can be more vulnerable to funding cycles and consolidation.
CBS does not publish a company-by-company contribution to the €45.6 billion total in this release. The report therefore cannot answer how concentrated the growth was among large equipment manufacturers, which segments generated the most growth, or whether Dutch fab activity, design work, materials, metrology, or engineering services gained the most ground. Those omissions matter because the operational risks are different: an export-control shift affecting lithography equipment is not the same exposure as a weak demand cycle for automotive chips or industrial components.
The national figure reinforces the Netherlands’ exposure to global demand
The Dutch government’s Semiconductor Vision 2035, published in April, describes the country as a major player in equipment, chip design, manufacturing and specialist supply. It says about 80 percent of Dutch semiconductor-industry revenue is generated outside Europe, principally in Asia and the United States.
That export orientation helps explain why a national turnover number has relevance beyond Dutch industrial policy. Demand for advanced data-center processors, AI systems, smartphones, vehicles and factory automation is global; so are the policy risks. The same government strategy flags geopolitical tension, market-access risks and dependencies in semiconductor supply chains. A strong domestic cluster does not insulate Dutch firms from restrictions, delayed fab investments, currency movements, or weakening capital-expenditure plans among overseas customers.
For Windows users and enterprise administrators, the effect is indirect but real. The availability and cost of PC processors, server CPUs, accelerators, storage controllers and networking silicon depend on a chain of equipment, materials, design and production activities spread across regions. The Netherlands has an outsized role in parts of that chain, particularly in production equipment and the surrounding precision-engineering base. When orders or trade rules change there, consequences often emerge later in hardware lead times and vendor pricing rather than in a single visible consumer product announcement.
The CBS release offers evidence that this industrial base became substantially larger between 2019 and 2025. It does not demonstrate that Europe has achieved semiconductor self-sufficiency, nor does it prove that supply risks have diminished. The Dutch government’s own strategy makes the opposite practical point: the country’s semiconductor sector earns most of its revenue abroad and remains bound to foreign fabs, foreign end markets and global policy decisions.
A better baseline, with a revision warning attached
CBS has created a measurement framework worth watching because it captures the companies around chip production that conventional classifications often bury inside machinery, engineering, software, research or industrial-services categories. The inclusion of those businesses is appropriate in a sector where a chip is rarely the work of a single type of firm.
But the first release should be treated as a baseline rather than a definitive league-table ranking of Dutch chip output. The €45.6 billion figure is attributed turnover, the scope includes upstream suppliers and services, and the allocation for many mixed-activity firms relies partly on modeled judgments. It is most valuable for tracking the Dutch sector over time—provided CBS keeps the series coherent and clearly documents any revisions.
The immediate takeaway is concrete: the Netherlands now has statistical evidence of a 43,200-person semiconductor workforce and a €45.6 billion supply chain that has more than doubled in six years. The next CBS update will show whether 2025’s slower growth marks a normalization after a rapid expansion cycle or the start of a more constrained phase for one of Europe’s most strategically important technology industries.