Labour market transitions between the first quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025.
Statbel publishes today the labour market transitions between the first quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025 for the 15-74-year-olds. They show that 29.7% of the unemployed from a year ago made the transition to work, and 46.0% remained unemployed. 24.3% of the unemployed became inactive on the labour market. Furthermore, we see that nearly 9 out of 10 inactive persons remained inactive on the labour market between the first quarter of 2024 and that of 2025. Most of them were either retired or student, and so were not immediately available on the labour market. Finally, the results also show that people still stay in employment easily: 93.7% of people who were employed last year are still working. Only a small percentage became unemployed or inactive.
Unemployed
The number of unemployed people that remained unemployed reached again a notable peak this quarter: 46.0% of people who were unemployed in the first quarter of 2024 are still unemployed in the first quarter of 2025. 29.7% of the unemployed in the first quarter of 2024 have a job a year later. In absolute numbers, this means that of the just over 302,000 unemployed people in the first quarter of 2024, 139,000 are still unemployed one year later, 90,000 are working and 74,000 have become inactive (24.3%), which means that they are no longer seeking work and/or are not available within two weeks.
We see large regional differences here: of the Flemish unemployed in the first quarter of 2024, 36.1% are still unemployed one year later. Figures are higher in the Brussels-Capital Region and in the Walloon Region: the percentage of people remaining unemployed over a 1-year period stands at 58.2% in the Brussels-Capital Region and at 48.7% in the Walloon Region.
Inactive people on the labour market
The vast majority of inactive people are still inactive one year later. Of the 3.4 million people who were inactive in the first quarter of 2024, 87.2% or 3 million are still inactive one year later. 9.3% or 317,000 persons have started to work and a small percentage of 3.5% or 120,000 people have made the transition to unemployment. Note that we always use the ILO definition of unemployment. This means that these people are now seeking work and are also available for a job, whereas this was not the case a year earlier.
Despite the transition figures fluctuating hard, it seems that more inactive people became employed in the last year than in previous quarters. There also seems to be a limited increase in inactive people who are seeking work.
Employed
A very high percentage of people who were employed a year ago are still working today: 93.7% of people who were employed in the first quarter of 2024 are still employed in the first quarter of 2025. In addition, 1.5% of employed people (77,000 persons) have become unemployed a year later and 4.7% (about 238,000 persons) have become inactive. These figures remained fairly stable compared to the transitions between the previous quarters.
We see every quarter that the percentage of people staying in employment remains about the same. However, there are big differences: men are slightly more likely to stay in employment than women. But really big differences can be seen by level of education: 98.5% of the highly-skilled people stay in employment, compared to 92.0% for medium-skilled people and only 79.4% for low-skilled people. We also see big differences by age: 85.3% of people under 30 years of age stay in employment, 95.3% over 30. We see limited differences between the regions: the fewest people stay in employment in the Brussels-Capital Region, followed by the Walloon Region and Flemish Region. People having the Belgian nationality are slightly more likely to stay in employment than those of other nationalities.