As Belgian statistical office, Statbel wants to map the impact of the COVID-19 on the labour market. This is why we will publish from now on provisional monthly data on employment and unemployment from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). This survey is harmonised at European level. In this first publication, we will look into the working time and the reasons why people work more or less during the coronavirus crisis. We can see, as expected, a clear decrease in working hours. One employed person out of four worked less than usual, or did not work at all, in the course of March.
Because the data are experimental, produced to map the coronavirus crisis, Statbel publishes them on the Statbel DataLab page, where new methods and experimental statistics are disseminated.
The survey
The Labour Force Survey is a continuous survey, which means that the sample is evenly spread over the 52 (reference) weeks of the year. This makes it possible to calculate monthly results, in addition to the annual and quarterly results that Statbel has published on its website up to now. The selected respondents answer a questionnaire mainly related to their activity in the course of a given reference week.
Internationally comparable figures and definitions
The definitions regarding employment and unemployment used are those of the International Labour Office (ILO), in order to allow international comparison. These ILO definitions remain unchanged, also during this crisis period. This ensures that the figures remain comparable, both between countries and over time.
According to these definitions, temporarily unemployed persons are included in the employed persons. They do have a job, from which they were temporarily absent. This means that we do not expect the crisis to have a major impact in the short term on the estimate of the number of employed persons. The figures of March 2020 confirm that: the employment rate of people aged 20-64 is estimated at 70.6 % and is slightly higher than in February. Part of the ILO unemployed may have become inactive, because they no longer actively looked for a job, or because they were no longer available. Three criteria determine if a person is included as ILO unemployed. These criteria must be simultaneously satisfied:
- you do not have a job
- you have to be actively looking for work
- you have to available to start working within two weeks.
For example, if someone is not available to start working because he/she has to care for the children, he/she will be counted among the inactive and not among the ILO unemployed.
At the moment, however, we do not yet see any clear shifts in the monthly figures, but the unemployment rate of March is below the unemployment rate of February.
The working time decreases due to the coronavirus crisis
As expected, the coronavirus crisis has an impact on the working time. The data for March 2020 already show a number of striking evolutions.
- In March 2020, employed persons worked an average of 32.8 hours in a full-time job and 19.4 hours in a part-time job, in what they consider to be their main job.
- This average is lower than in February 2020, where an average of 37.3 hours were worked in a full-time job and 21.6 hours in a part-time job.
- It is also lower than in March 2019, when a full-time job accounted for an average of 37.5 hours and a part-time job for 22.0 hours.
Almost one out four worked less or did not work
Nearly one in four employed persons indicates that they worked fewer hours than usual or did not worked at all. It is estimated that 1,152,000 employed persons are concerned: 737,000 did not work and 415,000 worked fewer hours than usual. This is the average for the whole month of March. This takes into account the weeks before as well as the weeks after the lockdown. The figures take into account both the answers of respondents surveyed in respect of one of the first two reference weeks of March (before the lockdown) and those of respondents surveyed in respect of one of the last two reference weeks of March. Each respondent was surveyed about only one predetermined reference week.
Illness as the main reason for absence
The most common reason for not working is illness, accident or temporary disability. In March 2020, an average of about 250,000 employed persons were absent due to an illness during the entire reference week. This figure amounted to 172,000 employed persons the previous month (February 2020) and to 165,000 the previous year (March 2019).
However, the largest increase was recorded for technical or economic reasons (temporary unemployment): from 6,000 temporarily unemployed in February to 223,000 in March 2020. Other reasons follow in the third place (166,000 persons). This includes a relatively large number of self-employed people who probably do not classify themselves as temporarily unemployed but who can apply for a bridging benefit. The other reasons probably include employees who did not work because of the coronavirus crisis but do not classify themselves as temporarily unemployed.
The main reasons for working fewer hours than usual are other reasons, followed by technical or economic reasons (temporary unemployment). On the third place come holidays, annual leave, compensation leave and unpaid leave.
These data on the reason for not working or for working fewer hours also refer - just like the other figures presented - to the whole month of March and relate partly to the period before and partly to the period after the lockdown.
Three percent worked more than usual
In March 2020, 3.2 % of persons employed indicated that they had worked more hours than usual. The main reasons for working more are technical or economic reasons, followed by other reasons and flexible working hours (decided by the employer).
These new indicators will be updated on a monthly basis. Please note that these monthly statistics are experimental statistics produced for the specific purpose of monitoring the coronavirus crisis. They are indicative monthly results that are subject to greater random fluctuations than quarterly and annual results because they are based on a twelfth of the annual sample. Small figures and small shifts over time should therefore be interpreted with caution as they are based on the answers of a limited number of respondents. The focus here should rather be on detecting larger evolutions.