Preliminary results for the monthly indicators based on the Labour Force Survey by Statbel, the Belgian statistical office, show that the employment rate for 20-64 year-olds in May, at 69.1%, remained at the same level as the previous month. However, there are differences by region: in Flanders, the employment rate is falling, while it is rising in Brussels and Wallonia. The unemployment rate increases by half a percentage point to 6.8%.
Employment rate increases in Brussels and Wallonia, but decreases in Flanders
Based on preliminary results from the Labour Force Survey for the month of May, the employment rate of 20-64-year-olds is 69.1%, which represents a stabilisation compared to the figure for the previous month. Behind this stabilisation at the level of the country as a whole, there are, however, different evolutions depending on the region. In Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region we see an increasing employment rate (from 58.7% to 60.4% for Brussels; from 62.7% to 64.7% for Wallonia), while in Flanders the figure drops from 74.6% to 73.3%.
At the beginning of 2021, a new European framework regulation came into force. This led to adjustments to the survey. Therefore, the employment rate of 2021 cannot simply be compared with the figures before 2021. One of the important changes: from this year on, people who are temporarily unemployed for more than three months are no longer counted among the employed, but among the unemployed or inactive, depending on the answers to the questions on job search and availability. In order to illustrate the impact of this changed treatment of the long-term temporarily unemployed, we calculate, in addition to the official employment rate, an alternative employment rate, whereby the long-term temporarily unemployed are, as before, classified as employed persons. This figure is 69.7% in May 2021 compared to 70.4% in the month of April. This different evolution between the official and alternative employment rates can be explained by the sharp decline in the number of long-term temporarily unemployed people in May. Whereas in April there were still some 90,000 long-term unemployed people, in May this number was halved to 44,000. This reduces the difference between the official and alternative employment rates. In the month of April, the official figure was 1.3 percentage points higher than the alternative figure. In the month of May, this is only 0.6 percentage points.
Unemployment rate rises, especially among low-skilled and young people
The unemployment rate of 15-64-year-olds in May was 6.8%, which implies an increase compared to April (6.3%). The increase is mainly among young and low-skilled people. Among young people, the unemployment rate evolved from 16.0% in April to 19.1% in May; among the low-skilled, it rose from 15.2% to 19.7%. It should be noted, however, that we saw a sharp decline in the same categories in the previous month.
The adjustments in the survey also have an impact on the calculation of the unemployment rate: if we recalculate the unemployment rate and consider the people who are temporarily unemployed for more than three months as working, as we did in 2020 and before, the unemployment rate in May would be 6.6% instead of 6.8%.
43.2% of persons employed sometimes, usually or always worked from home.
In May, teleworking was still mandatory for all people employed whose job allows. The percentage of people employed who sometimes, usually or always work from home has hardly changed in May compared to the previous month: in the month of May it is 43.2% compared to 43.4% in the month of April. Among employees, 40.5% sometimes, usually or always worked from home; among the self-employed, this was 58.8%.
Annual holidays or bank holiday main reason for absence
The figures on absence, either for the entire reference week or for part of the reference week, were already significantly higher in the month of April due to the effect of the Easter holidays. In the month of May, we see a similar effect due to the bank holidays that fell in this month. Especially the number of people who were absent for only part of the reference week was exceptionally high at 1,824 in May. 000 people. The overwhelming majority of this group gives leave, holidays or a bank holiday as the reason for their absence. In addition, we see that the number of people who have worked less because of temporary unemployment remains fairly high at 74,000. On the other hand, the number of employed persons who were in temporary unemployment for the entire reference week decreased by about 22,000 units. Note that this is a different group from the long-term temporarily unemployed people mentioned at the beginning of this report. When the total uninterrupted duration of temporary unemployment amounts to a maximum of 3 months, the temporarily unemployed are, as before, still counted as employed.