Is Curaçao’s Government Too Big? It’s Not That Simple

At the request of the Ministry of Planning, the Think To DO Institute compared Curaçao’s government to eleven other small island nations. The verdict on “too big” is nuanced: the real problem isn’t headcount but cost and disconnect. Curaçao’s wage bill is the highest share of government spending among six compared countries, and it kept rising even as GDP shrank.

Using IMF data, the study ranks Curaçao worst of all compared countries on one telling measure — the gap between GDP growth and wage-bill growth (minus 8% in two separate years). In plain terms: when the economy contracts, government wage spending should follow, but in Curaçao it doesn’t. About 22% of the labor force works in the public sector, and middle-level civil servant costs are disproportionate to their responsibilities.

Two deeper points stand out. First, inconsistent local data made firm conclusions genuinely difficult — the reported number of government employees ranged anywhere from roughly 4,000 to 7,000, depending on the source. Second, small island states inherently carry larger governments due to fixed costs of delivering services to small populations, so the answer isn’t simply cutting jobs. The report argues Curaçao copied the Kingdom’s structure rather than customizing its own, and points to “rightsizing,” shared services within the Kingdom, and e-government as smarter paths than blunt reduction.