Work organisation of wage earners and self-employed differs strongly

Work & training
Work organisation of wage earners and self-employed differs strongly

How do Belgians organise their job or how is their job organised? Thanks to a number of specific questions that focus on the work organisation, Statbel can provide an answer to this via the Labour Force Survey. The results of 2021 show the following:

  • 73.1% of the self-employed decide entirely themselves about the start and end of the working day. Only 8.2% of the wage earners can decide this themselves, 28% decide within certain limits, such as a flexible timetable and for 63.8% of the wage earners it is the employer or the organisation that decides when the wage earner starts and stops working.
  • As expected, managers are the ones who most often decide entirely themselves on the beginning and end of their working day, but the difference between men and women in this occupational group is large: 36.6% of men decide entirely themselves compared to 22.8% of women.
  • 41.5% of working people sometimes or usually work from home. Among wage earners, the percentage of homeworkers is 37.9% compared to 62.1% among the self-employed. 17.9% of the employees who do not always work from home could work more from home.
  • Evening work, night work, Saturday work and Sunday work are more often done by the self-employed than by wage earners.
  • 550,000 wage earners generally work in a shift system, which is 13.2% of all wage earners. The three sectors with the highest percentage of wage earners who usually work in a shift system are industry (28.8%), transportation and storage (26%) and human health and social work activities (24.6%).

You can find more details in the French or Dutch version.