Introduction

There are currently very detailed annual figures for VAT-registered units based on legal units (head offices). From the cubes published on Statbel, we can obtain results for different administrative entities down to municipal level, broken down by sector of economic activity, by employment classes and by legal form. These figures are often requested by users who want to have an idea of the number of enterprises in various sectors of economic activity.

However, these figures may give a truncated picture of reality because they only take account of legal units, whereas for some enterprises several establishment units are associated with one legal unit. By aggregating economic variables at establishment level, it is possible to increase the accuracy of the information. For example, a legal unit located in Brussels may have a large number of establishments with employment throughout the country. Thus, aggregation at legal unit level will report all the jobs associated with the Brussels region, while aggregation at establishment level will accurately report the distribution of jobs across the three regions. This example illustrates the value of this finer level of aggregation.

This publication covers establishments associated with economically active legal units (1.41 million establishments, 20% of which have salaried employment) in the fourth quarter of 2023 (examples of activity criteria: employment or turnover). This publication is associated with open data with data from 2015 to 2023.

The results presented here are based on statistical processes that may still be subject to certain adjustments to improve coverage or consistency. We therefore present them here in the form of “experimental statistics”.

Impact of the level of aggregation

The regional breakdown of salaried employment per level of aggregation is shown in Figure 1. The left part of the figure shows the breakdown per legal unit and the right part per establishment. The centre shows the flows between both levels of aggregation. Specifically, the analysis shows higher salaried employment in the Brussels region for legal units than for establishments. The opposite trend is observed in the Flemish and Walloon regions. This difference is due to legal units located in the Brussels region having salaried employment-generating establishments in the other two regions. 60% of this transfer came from establishments operating in four sectors of economic activity: public administration and defence; compulsory social security (O), administrative and support service activities (N), transportation and storage (H) and finally human health and social work activities (Q).

Establishments

This section presents statistics on establishments, published at two levels: at regional level in absolute values and at municipal level in the form of classes in order to preserve confidentiality. Results are segmented according to three key variables: geographical location, sector of economic activity and nature of the establishment's parent legal unit. The indicators cover salaried employment and the total number of establishments. Some of the data have been anonymised for confidentiality reasons, leading to 667 salaried jobs and 55 establishments for which no location, sector of activity or ownership of the entity is defined. At Refnis level, due to the small population of Herstappe, the results for Herstappe and Tongeren were combined.

Density of local units and jobs

In order to facilitate comparison between municipalities, the number of salaried jobs and the number of establishment units are reported in relation to the municipal population, providing “per capita” indicators. The map highlights high employment density in some hubs, such as Machelen, Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, Zaventem and the city of Brussels, while more rural municipalities such as Berloz, Cerfontaine, Musson and Hélécine are in the lowest categories. The density of establishments per capita also seems higher in urban municipalities.

Employment type

This section provides a breakdown of the type of salaried employment (blue-collar, white-collar or civil servant) according to location and activity^[1].

Location

Map – Employment types (2023)
The distribution by class reveals contrasting profiles: the majority of municipalities fall within the middle range in terms of the proportion of workers and employees, while the proportion of civil servants varies more widely in administrative and university centres.

Activity

At national level, blue-collar workers, white-collar workers and civil servants account for 33%, 54% and 13% of workers, respectively.

The breakdown of the type of salaried employment per NACE section is shown here below. We can see that civil servants are mainly found in public administration and defence; compulsory social security (O) and education (P). Blue-collar workers are strongly represented in manufacturing (C), administrative and support service activities (N), construction (F), transportation and storage (H) and accommodation and food service activities (I). White-collar workers are represented in most sectors, specifically in professional, scientific and technical activities (M), information and communication (J) and financial and insurance activities (K), in which they account for more than 90% of the staff. On the other hand, they are under-represented in accommodation and food service activities (I) and in construction (F).

Correlation activity/location

Map – Sectoral specialisation (NACE, 2023)
The map showing sectoral specialisation (share of employment per NACE section) illustrates the diversity of local economic structures. On average, the highest classes are found in Health and social work activities (Q), Wholesale and retail trade (G), Manufacturing (C), Education (P) and Public administration (O), with profiles varying greatly depending on the municipality. The other sections [e.g. Construction (F), Administrative and support service activities (N), Transportation (H), Accommodation and food service activities (I), Professional, scientific and technical activities (M), etc.] refine the interpretation of local specialisations.

Group affiliation

Map – Employment within multinational groups (2023)
The employment share within multinational groups is higher in the hubs where headquarters, international activities or logistics platforms are concentrated.

A legal unit can be bound to other legal units by links that are mainly financial (shareholding or control) or organisational (management, strategies, etc.). When several legal units are bound together, they form a group. It is therefore interesting to observe in which sectors groups of legal units are mainly active. In this analysis, non-market-oriented legal units (mainly from the public sector) have been removed in order to focus on economic players. At national level, 43% of salaried jobs are linked to independent legal units and 57% to legal units belonging to a group. We can see that human health and social work activities (Q) and accommodation and food service activities (I) have few salaried jobs linked to groups. On the other hand, wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles (G), manufacturing (C), administrative and support service activities (N), transportation and storage (H) and information and communication (J) have a strong group presence.

The breakdown of salaried employment in establishments linked to market-oriented/non-market-oriented legal units by sector of economic activity is shown in the table below. A market-oriented legal unit^[2] is defined as a unit whose output is most or all marketed.

We can see that two sectors have a very low market exposure: public administration and defence; compulsory social security (O) and education (P). To a lesser extent, human health and social work activities (Q) have a significant non-market-oriented fraction (+/- 20%). These sectors account for the majority of public service activities. The other sectors are largely market-oriented.

Type of entity (natural person / legal entity)

At national level, natural persons and legal entities account for 32.1% and 67.9% of establishments, respectively. The breakdown per sector of economic activity shows that human health and social work activities (Q), public administration and defence; compulsory social security (O) and financial and insurance activities (K) have a very high proportion of establishments linked to legal entities. Conversely, the sector of agriculture, forestry and fishing (A) has a majority of establishments linked to natural persons.

Table 3. Number of establishments per type of entity