Dutch bid to replace government jobs with AI set to test technology and society

A spring day in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on April 8. The Dutch government intends to lose roughly 15% of its civil servants to save €3.5 billion ($3.9 billion) a year from 2035. | REUTERS

Oct 28, 2026

The Dutch government’s artificial intelligence-led efficiency drive to cut 25,000 civil servant jobs is perhaps the most ambitious government plan yet to use technology to reduce the state’s payroll. Making it work — and rolling out similar programs in other countries — could prove tricky.

The Netherlands intends to lose roughly 15% of its civil servants to save €3.5 billion ($3.9 billion) a year from 2035, the government said Monday. Police and defense are among the exempted areas, while ministries, inspectorates and implementing agencies could see headcount reductions of as much as 60%.

Translated to the U.S., that would mean about 150,000 job cuts, calculations show. That’s around half the number of federal employees who left their jobs in 2025 after efforts by Elon Musk’s DOGE, in the early days of the second Trump administration, to reshape the government workforce.

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