{"version":1,"asset_type":"statistical_series","data_type":"time_series","slug":"eu-workplace-burnout","url":"https://apiardata.com/statistics/eu-workplace-burnout","html_url":"https://apiardata.com/statistics/eu-workplace-burnout/","title":"EU Workplace Burnout — Prevalence, Trends and Economic Cost (2007–2025)","description":"Burnout prevalence among European workers, tracked annually via the Netherlands NEA/CBS survey (the EU's longest-running burnout time series) and contextualised against Eurofound, ESENER, and ETUI economic cost estimates. The Netherlands burnout rate rose from 11.3% in 2007 to 20.7% in 2025, its highest recorded level.","domain":"labor","category":"Labour & Employment","keywords":["Labour & Employment","Occupational Health","Burnout & Psychosocial Risk","Workforce Productivity","Social Protection"],"publisher":"CBS / TNO — Netherlands Working Conditions Survey (NEA); Eurofound; EU-OSHA ESENER; ETUI","frequency":"Annual","geography":"Netherlands (primary series); EU-27 context from Eurofound, ESENER, ETUI","temporal_coverage":"2007/..","last_updated":"2026-07-25","last_updated_text":"July 25, 2026","data_as_of":"2025","variable_measured":"Proportion of employed workers reporting burnout complaints (Netherlands NEA primary series); EU-27 cross-sectional burnout prevalence (EWCS 2015 Schaufeli analysis)","measurement_technique":"Annual telephone/online survey of approximately 60,000 employed persons in the Netherlands using a validated burnout scale (NEA/CBS/TNO); EU-wide context from Eurofound EWCS face-to-face surveys and EU-OSHA ESENER establishment surveys","license":"https://apiardata.com/data-license","is_accessible_for_free":true,"sources":[{"name":"CBS / TNO Netherlands Working Conditions Survey (NEA) — Annual burnout statistics","url":"https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/our-services/methods/surveys/brief-survey-description/netherlands-working-conditions-survey--nea--"},{"name":"TNO — Trends in burnout complaints in the Netherlands (NEA 2007–2023)","url":"https://repository.tno.nl/SingleDoc?docId=73262"},{"name":"Eurofound — Burnout in the workplace: A review of data and policy responses in the EU (2018)","url":"https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/en/publications/all/burnout-workplace-review-data-and-policy-responses-eu"},{"name":"Eurofound — Prevalence of burnout among workers","url":"https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/en/publications/all/prevalence-burnout-among-workers"},{"name":"ETUI — Work-related depression costs EU more than €100bn annually (2025)","url":"https://www.etui.org/news/first-time-european-report-puts-price-stress-work"},{"name":"EU-OSHA ESENER 2024 — First findings of the Fourth European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks","url":"https://osha.europa.eu/en/publications/first-findings-fourth-european-survey-enterprises-new-and-emerging-risks-esener-2024"},{"name":"EU-OSHA — Psychosocial risks and mental health at work","url":"https://osha.europa.eu/en/themes/psychosocial-risks-and-mental-health"},{"name":"CBS Netherlands in Numbers 2021 — Mental fatigue by occupation","url":"https://longreads.cbs.nl/the-netherlands-in-numbers-2021/which-jobs-have-the-highest-levels-of-mental-fatigue/"}],"meta":[{"label":"Frequency","value":"Annual"},{"label":"Coverage","value":"2007–2025 (Netherlands NEA longitudinal series; 2024 wave not separately published)"},{"label":"Observations","value":"18"},{"label":"Geography","value":"Netherlands (primary series); EU-27 context from Eurofound, ESENER, ETUI"},{"label":"Last updated","value":"July 25, 2026"}],"kpis":[{"label":"Netherlands Burnout Rate (2025)","value":"20.7%","unit":"% of employed workers (NEA survey)","trend":{"direction":"up","value":"+9.4pp since 2007"}},{"label":"EU Workforce Burnout Prevalence","value":"~10%","unit":"EU+ average (Eurofound / Schaufeli EWCS 2015)","trend":{"direction":"up","value":"4.3% (FI) – 20.6% (SI); France ~17%"}},{"label":"Annual Cost — Work-Related Depression (EU)","value":">€100bn","unit":"Per year (ETUI 2025 estimate)","trend":{"direction":"up","value":"~10,000 deaths/year (2015 attribution)"}},{"label":"ESENER Time Pressure — EU Establishments (2024)","value":"43%","unit":"% of EU establishments reporting time pressure","trend":{"direction":"neutral","value":"Unchanged from 2014 (43%)"}}],"series":[{"key":"value","label":"Burnout Rate — Netherlands Working Population (%)"}],"observation_count":18,"observations":[{"period":"2007","value":11.3},{"period":"2008","value":11.8},{"period":"2009","value":12.3},{"period":"2010","value":12.8},{"period":"2011","value":12.7},{"period":"2012","value":12.5},{"period":"2013","value":12.4},{"period":"2014","value":14.6},{"period":"2015","value":15.2},{"period":"2016","value":15.8},{"period":"2017","value":16.4},{"period":"2018","value":17},{"period":"2019","value":17},{"period":"2020","value":16},{"period":"2021","value":17},{"period":"2022","value":20},{"period":"2023","value":19},{"period":"2025","value":20.7}],"table":{"columns":[{"key":"period","label":"Year"},{"key":"burnoutRate","label":"Burnout Rate (%)"},{"key":"yoyChange","label":"Change (pp)"},{"key":"source","label":"Source"},{"key":"notes","label":"Context"}],"rows":[{"period":"2025","burnoutRate":"20.7","yoyChange":"+1.7pp vs 2023","source":"Netherlands NEA (RIVM)","notes":"Second consecutive rise; 2024 wave figure not separately confirmed in public sources reviewed"},{"period":"2023","burnoutRate":"19.0","yoyChange":"-1.0pp","source":"Netherlands NEA","notes":"Post-pandemic normalization; approx. 1.4 million workers affected"},{"period":"2022","burnoutRate":"20.0","yoyChange":"+3.0pp","source":"Netherlands NEA","notes":"Post-pandemic peak; highest on record since 2007"},{"period":"2021","burnoutRate":"17.0","yoyChange":"+1.0pp","source":"Netherlands NEA","notes":"Recovery year; women and young workers driving increase"},{"period":"2020","burnoutRate":"16.0","yoyChange":"-1.0pp","source":"Netherlands NEA","notes":"COVID-19 year; pandemic temporarily suppressed self-reporting"},{"period":"2019","burnoutRate":"17.0","yoyChange":"unchanged","source":"Netherlands NEA","notes":"Pre-pandemic peak (equal to 2018)"},{"period":"2018","burnoutRate":"17.0","yoyChange":"+2.4pp vs 2014","source":"Netherlands NEA","notes":"Sustained rise; healthcare and education hardest hit"},{"period":"2014","burnoutRate":"14.6","yoyChange":"+2.2pp vs 2013","source":"Netherlands NEA","notes":"Breakout year — sharpest single-year jump in series"},{"period":"2013","burnoutRate":"12.4","yoyChange":"-0.4pp vs 2010","source":"Netherlands NEA","notes":"Cyclical trough before structural re-acceleration"},{"period":"2010","burnoutRate":"12.8","yoyChange":"+1.5pp vs 2007","source":"Netherlands NEA","notes":"Post-GFC; stress rising but not yet accelerating"},{"period":"2007","burnoutRate":"11.3","yoyChange":"baseline","source":"Netherlands NEA","notes":"First year of NEA burnout monitoring scale"}]},"qa":[{"question":"What is burnout and how is it measured in the NEA survey?","answer":"Burnout — defined by the World Health Organization in ICD-11 as an occupational phenomenon characterised by feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from work, and reduced professional efficacy — is measured in the Netherlands Working Conditions Survey (NEA) using a validated four-item scale drawn from the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory. Respondents answer questions about emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation on a frequency scale; those endorsing high levels on all items are classified as having burnout complaints. The NEA surveys approximately 60,000 employed persons annually, making it one of the most statistically robust annual burnout monitoring systems in Europe."},{"question":"Why is the Netherlands used as the primary time series when this is a page about EU burnout?","answer":"The Netherlands operates the only annual, nationally representative, methodologically consistent burnout time series in the European Union covering the full period from 2007 to the present. Other EU member states (notably Germany, Belgium, and Sweden) publish burnout or stress-related sick leave data, but with methodological inconsistencies, multi-year gaps, or diagnostic coding changes that make long-run trend comparison unreliable. The Netherlands NEA series uses a fixed measurement instrument, making it the cleanest longitudinal proxy for EU burnout trends. The Dutch context is also analytically important: despite having among the lowest cross-sectional burnout prevalence in Europe (Schaufeli EWCS 2015 analysis), the Netherlands has seen the sharpest documented long-run increase — from 11.3% in 2007 to 20.7% in 2025 — illustrating a structural deterioration even in countries with strong labour market protections."},{"question":"How does the Netherlands burnout trend compare to EU-wide estimates?","answer":"The Netherlands has historically had below-EU-average burnout prevalence. The 2015 Eurofound-commissioned analysis by Schaufeli, using EWCS data from 35 European countries, found the EU+ average burnout rate at approximately 10%, with the Netherlands at the lower end of the distribution and Slovenia at 20.6% and France at approximately 17% at the high end. The Netherlands crossed the EU average threshold around 2017-2018 as its rate climbed above 17%, representing a structural deterioration. Germany, with an approximately 8% burnout rate based on national survey data and the Schaufeli EWCS 2015 analysis, and Finland at 4.3% remain below the Netherlands' current level. The EU-wide picture is complicated by inconsistent national measurement, but the directional signal from all available surveys — EWCS, ESENER, national health insurance data — is consistently upward."},{"question":"What is the economic cost of workplace burnout across the EU?","answer":"The European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), in a landmark April 2025 study presented at a European Commission conference on psychosocial risks, estimated that work-related depression — of which burnout is the primary occupational driver — costs the EU more than €100 billion per year, with employers bearing more than 80% of the burden through lost productivity, presenteeism, and replacement costs. In 2015 (the most recent year for which full attribution modelling was completed), approximately 6,000 deaths from coronary heart disease and over 4,800 depression-related suicides were attributed to psychosocial work exposures. A broader 2013 EU-funded Matrix study estimated the total cost of work-related depression at €617 billion annually when absenteeism, presenteeism, productivity loss, healthcare, and welfare costs were included — though this wider estimate covers stress-related illness beyond clinical burnout alone."},{"question":"Which EU sectors and worker groups face the highest burnout exposure?","answer":"Healthcare, education, and social care consistently show the highest burnout rates across all major European surveys. In the Netherlands, the CBS 2021 'Netherlands in Numbers' publication (using NEA data) found 21% of educators and 18% of healthcare and welfare workers reported burnout complaints, compared to 10-12% in transport and agriculture. The EU-OSHA ESENER 2024 survey found that 56% of EU establishments in sectors with high emotional demands (including health, education, and social care) reported difficult customer, patient, or pupil interactions as a key psychosocial risk — the single most-cited stressor across European workplaces. Younger workers and women have driven the most rapid increases since 2020: TNO/CBS data show the burnout rate among Dutch workers aged 18-34 reached one-in-four by 2022, with young women at 29% against young men at 23% (vs. 13% for young men in 2015). Highly educated workers and those in contact-intensive roles are disproportionately affected, with implications for talent retention in knowledge-intensive sectors."},{"question":"What does the 2020 COVID dip in the Netherlands data reflect, and is burnout genuinely structural or cyclical?","answer":"The temporary decline in Netherlands burnout complaints in 2020 (from 17% in 2019 to 16%) reflects a well-documented pandemic 'resilience paradox': during acute external crises, individuals tend to prioritise physiological and job-security concerns over self-reporting of work-related exhaustion, and many workers in non-essential sectors shifted to remote work with initially reduced commuting and scheduling pressure. The subsequent sharp rebound to 17% in 2021 and 20% in 2022 — overshooting the pre-pandemic level by 3 percentage points — demonstrates that the underlying structural drivers (rising work intensity, always-on digital work cultures, care obligations amplified by the pandemic) are not cyclical. Eurofound's EWCS 2024 survey confirmed that the work intensity dimension of job quality has continued deteriorating since 2015, particularly for women, even as physical hazard exposure has declined. The structural interpretation is further supported by Germany's burnout-related sick leave data, which shows mean episode duration rising from 24 days (2012-2014) to 36 days (2020-2022) — indicating that each burnout episode is becoming more severe even as diagnostic practices have stabilised."}]}