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Statistics on establishment units
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 (1.37 million establishments, 21% of which have employment) in the fourth quarter of 2022 (examples of activity criteria: employment or turnover). This publication is associated with open data with data from 2015 to 2022.
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
This first section will focus on the differences in paid employment per region and per sector of economic activity, depending on whether we are looking at the legal unit or the establishment level.
Location
The regional breakdown of paid 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 paid 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 establishments generating salaried jobs 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).
Sector of economic activity
The figure below shows the breakdown of paid employment per sector of economic activity (NACE) for both levels of aggregation. The impact of the aggregation level is particularly noticeable for public administration and defence; compulsory social security (O), education (P) and human health and social work activities (Q). Whereas public administration accounts for 13.1% of total paid employment when the legal unit's sector of activity is taken into account, it accounts for only 9.2% of paid employment in establishments. This is due to the fact that a number of legal units in public administration (O) have establishments operating in other sections such as education (P) or human health (Q).
<2>Establishments
This section shows a set of statistics, segmented according to several key variables, namely geographical location, sector of economic activity and the nature of the establishment's parent legal unit. These statistics detail specific data on paid employment and the total number of establishments. Some of the data have been anonymised for confidentiality reasons, resulting in 667 salaried jobs and 55 establishments for which no location, sector of activity or ownership of the entity is defined.
Workers’ gender
This section examines the link between the sector of economic activity, region and type of work and the gender of workers.
Workers’ gender / sector of economic activity
Of the total number of salaried jobs at establishment level, 50.2% are held by men and 49.8% by women. The breakdown of paid employment by gender according to activity section shows that some sectors are predominantly male or female. We can see sections with predominantly female paid employment, such as human health and social work activities (Q) and education (P). Conversely, manufacturing, transportation and storage, construction and information and communication are associated with predominantly male paid employment.
Note: for the sake of brevity, only sections with more than 100,000 salaried jobs are presented.
Table 1 Employment breakdown Men/Women for the main NACE sections
| NACE | Male employment | Female employment | Total employment | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C Manufacturing | 374,722 | 76.4% | 115,818 | 23.6% | 490,540 | 100.0% |
| F Construction | 192,745 | 89.2% | 23,436 | 10.8% | 216,181 | 100.0% |
| G Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles | 274,758 | 53.5% | 239,097 | 46.5% | 513,855 | 100.0% |
| H Transportation and storage | 187,287 | 79.1% | 49,540 | 20.9% | 236,827 | 100.0% |
| I Accommodation and food service activities | 75,547 | 51.9% | 69,903 | 48.1% | 145,450 | 100.0% |
| J Information and communication | 86,408 | 69.2% | 38,450 | 30.8% | 124,858 | 100.0% |
| K Financial and insurance activities | 51,542 | 46.5% | 59,184 | 53.5% | 110,726 | 100.0% |
| M Professional, scientific and technical activities | 105,591 | 49.6% | 107,389 | 50.4% | 212,980 | 100.0% |
| N Administrative and support service activities | 186,703 | 43.0% | 247,311 | 57.0% | 434,014 | 100.0% |
| O Public administration and defence; compulsory social security | 194,418 | 50.0% | 194,411 | 50.0% | 388,829 | 100.0% |
| P Education | 132,859 | 29.2% | 322,271 | 70.8% | 455,130 | 100.0% |
| Q Human health and social work activities | 132,483 | 20.2% | 523,629 | 79.8% | 656,112 | 100.0% |
Workers’ gender per location
At national level, 50.2% of salaried jobs are held by men and 49.8% by women. Compared to the national average, there are more female salaried jobs in Brussels and in Wallonia and fewer in Flanders.
| Region | Male employment | Female employment | Total employment | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brussels | 311,867 | 48.3% | 334,373 | 51.7% | 646,240 | 100.0% |
| Flanders | 1,258,296 | 51.1% | 1,203,792 | 48.9% | 2,462,088 | 100.0% |
| Wallonia | 548,605 | 49.3% | 564,690 | 50.7% | 1,113,295 | 100.0% |
| Total | 2,118,768 | 50.2% | 2,102,855 | 49.8% | 4,221,623 | 100.0% |
Employment type
This section provides a breakdown of the type of paid employment (blue-collar, white-collar or civil servant) according to location and activity[1].
Location
The regional breakdown of the different types of employment is shown in the table below.
The relative distributions show a higher concentration of civil servants in Brussels and Wallonia, a lower presence of blue-collar workers in Brussels, and a higher proportion of white-collar workers in Brussels. These observations highlight the differences in the distribution of job types between the regions, which can be explained by the nature of the activities carried out in the different regions.
Table 2 Regional breakdown of the various types of employment
| Brussels | Flanders | Wallonia | National | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue-collar | Absolute | 124,144 | 908,755 | 375,767 | 1,408,666 |
| Relative | 19.2% | 36.9% | 33.8% | 33.4% | |
| White collar | Absolute | 408,088 | 1,292,096 | 572,505 | 2,272,689 |
| Relative | 63.1% | 52.5% | 51.4% | 53.8% | |
| Civil servant | Absolute | 114,008 | 261,237 | 165,023 | 540,268 |
| Relative | 17.6% | 10.6% | 14.8% | 12.8% | |
| Total | Absolute | 646,240 | 2,462,088 | 1,113,295 | 4,221,623 |
| Relative | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | |
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 paid 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).
| NACE | Blue collar | White collar | Civil servant | Total | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C Manufacturing | 289,841 | 59.1% | 198,408 | 40.4% | 2,291 | 0.5% | 490,540 | 100.0% |
| F Construction | 154,956 | 71.7% | 56,450 | 26.1% | 4,775 | 2.2% | 216,181 | 100.0% |
| G Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles | 116,180 | 22.6% | 397,673 | 77.4% | 2 | 0.0% | 513,855 | 100.0% |
| H Transportation and storage | 117,275 | 49.5% | 93,661 | 39.5% | 25,891 | 10.9% | 236,827 | 100.0% |
| I Accommodation and food service activities | 121,370 | 83.4% | 19,919 | 13.7% | 4,161 | 2.9% | 145,450 | 100.0% |
| J Information and communication | 1,479 | 1.2% | 120,525 | 96.5% | 2,854 | 2.3% | 124,858 | 100.0% |
| K Financial and insurance activities | 1,567 | 1.4% | 108,989 | 98.4% | 170 | 0.2% | 110,726 | 100.0% |
| M Professional, scientific and technical activities | 9,415 | 4.4% | 200,859 | 94.3% | 2,706 | 1.3% | 212,980 | 100.0% |
| N Administrative and support service activities | 288,667 | 66.5% | 137,352 | 31.6% | 7,995 | 1.8% | 434,014 | 100.0% |
| O Public administration and defence; compulsory social security | 52,849 | 13.6% | 127,762 | 32.9% | 208,218 | 53.6% | 388,829 | 100.0% |
| P Education | 26,978 | 5.9% | 184,649 | 40.6% | 243,503 | 53.5% | 455,130 | 100.0% |
| Q Human health and social work activities | 147,865 | 22.5% | 483,827 | 73.7% | 24,420 | 3.7% | 656,112 | 100.0% |
Correlation activity/location
At national level, the Brussels, Flemish and Walloon regions account for 15.3%, 58.3% and 26.4% of workers, respectively.
The table below shows the relative importance of each activity section in terms of paid employment, by region. We can see a lower presence of the sections related to construction (F) and manufacturing (C) in the Brussels-Capital Region compared to the other regions. On the other hand, public administration and defence; compulsory social security (O), information and communication (J), professional, scientific and technical activities (M) and financial activities (K) are more important in Brussels than in the Flemish and Walloon regions.
| NACE | Brussels | Flanders | Wallonia | Total | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C Manufacturing | 16,528 | 3.4% | 350,080 | 71.4% | 123,932 | 25.3% | 490,540 | 100.0% |
| F Construction | 15,439 | 7.1% | 135,453 | 62.7% | 65,289 | 30.2% | 216,181 | 100.0% |
| G Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles | 51,837 | 10.1% | 325,228 | 63.3% | 136,790 | 26.6% | 513,855 | 100.0% |
| H Transportation and storage | 30,280 | 12.8% | 153,871 | 65.0% | 52,676 | 22.2% | 236,827 | 100.0% |
| I Accommodation and food service activities | 27,823 | 19.1% | 81,589 | 56.1% | 36,038 | 24.8% | 145,450 | 100.0% |
| J Information and communication | 33,840 | 27.1% | 72,442 | 58.0% | 18,576 | 14.9% | 124,858 | 100.0% |
| K Financial and insurance activities | 50,940 | 46.0% | 42,606 | 38.5% | 17,180 | 15.5% | 110,726 | 100.0% |
| M Professional, scientific and technical activities | 43,997 | 20.7% | 133,747 | 62.8% | 35,236 | 16.5% | 212,980 | 100.0% |
| N Administrative and support service activities | 70,166 | 16.2% | 266,671 | 61.4% | 97,177 | 22.4% | 434,014 | 100.0% |
| O Public administration and defence; compulsory social security | 102,919 | 26.5% | 157,717 | 40.6% | 128,193 | 33.0% | 388,829 | 100.0% |
| P Education | 70,207 | 15.4% | 245,785 | 54.0% | 139,138 | 30.6% | 455,130 | 100.0% |
| Q Human health and social work activities | 78,077 | 11.9% | 379,653 | 57.9% | 198,382 | 30.2% | 656,112 | 100.0% |
Group affiliation
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.
| NACE | Group | Non-group | Total | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C Manufacturing | 406,067 | 82.9% | 84,008 | 17.1% | 490,075 | 100.0% |
| F Construction | 106,243 | 50.6% | 103,928 | 49.4% | 210,171 | 100.0% |
| G Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles | 343,307 | 66.9% | 170,145 | 33.1% | 513,452 | 100.0% |
| H Transportation and storage | 149,811 | 72.5% | 56,882 | 27.5% | 206,693 | 100.0% |
| I Accommodation and food service activities | 40,545 | 29.3% | 98,024 | 70.7% | 138,569 | 100.0% |
| J Information and communication | 87,721 | 75.7% | 28,186 | 24.3% | 115,907 | 100.0% |
| K Financial and insurance activities | 71,430 | 65.2% | 38,075 | 34.8% | 109,505 | 100.0% |
| M Professional, scientific and technical activities | 122,301 | 61.5% | 76,692 | 38.5% | 198,993 | 100.0% |
| N Administrative and support service activities | 276,337 | 67.3% | 133,990 | 32.7% | 410,327 | 100.0% |
| Q Human health and social work activities | 91,345 | 17.1% | 442,864 | 82.9% | 534,209 | 100.0% |
The breakdown of paid employment in establishments linked to market/non-market legal units by sector of economic activity is shown in the table below. A market 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.
| NACE | Non-market | Market | Total | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C Manufacturing | 121,903 | 18.6% | 534,209 | 81.4% | 656,112 | 100.0% |
| F Construction | 6,010 | 2.8% | 210,171 | 97.2% | 216,181 | 100.0% |
| G Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles | 403 | 0.1% | 513,452 | 99.9% | 513,855 | 100.0% |
| H Transportation and storage | 30,134 | 12.7% | 206,693 | 87.3% | 236,827 | 100.0% |
| I Accommodation and food service activities | 6,881 | 4.7% | 138,569 | 95.3% | 145,450 | 100.0% |
| J Information and communication | 8,951 | 7.2% | 115,907 | 92.8% | 124,858 | 100.0% |
| K Financial and insurance activities | 1,221 | 1.1% | 109,505 | 98.9% | 110,726 | 100.0% |
| M Professional, scientific and technical activities | 13,987 | 6.6% | 198,993 | 93.4% | 212,980 | 100.0% |
| N Administrative and support service activities | 23,687 | 5.5% | 410,327 | 94.5% | 434,014 | 100.0% |
| O Public administration and defence; compulsory social security | 382,597 | 98.4% | 6,232 | 1.6% | 388,829 | 100.0% |
| P Education | 428,961 | 94.3% | 26,169 | 5.7% | 455,130 | 100.0% |
| Q Human health and social work activities | 121,903 | 18.6% | 534,209 | 81.4% | 656,112 | 100.0% |
Type of entity (natural person / legal entity)
At national level, natural persons and legal entities account for 33.8% and 66.2% 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
| NACE | Natural person | Legal entity | Total | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Agriculture, forestry and fishing | 40,400 | 70.2% | 17,114 | 29.8% | 57,514 | 100.0% |
| C Manufacturing | 26,944 | 40.9% | 39,012 | 59.1% | 65,956 | 100.0% |
| F Construction | 77,788 | 43.7% | 100,363 | 56.3% | 178,151 | 100.0% |
| G Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles | 72,076 | 31.3% | 158,211 | 68.7% | 230,287 | 100.0% |
| H Transportation and storage | 7,544 | 22.0% | 26,744 | 78.0% | 34,288 | 100.0% |
| I Accommodation and food service activities | 31,636 | 36.9% | 54,187 | 63.1% | 85,823 | 100.0% |
| J Information and communication | 15,316 | 24.5% | 47,311 | 75.5% | 62,627 | 100.0% |
| K Financial and insurance activities | 927 | 3.9% | 22,777 | 96.1% | 23,704 | 100.0% |
| M Professional, scientific and technical activities | 77,118 | 30.9% | 172,710 | 69.1% | 249,828 | 100.0% |
| N Administrative and support service activities | 33,624 | 41.8% | 46,789 | 58.2% | 80,413 | 100.0% |
| O Public administration and defence; compulsory social security | 359 | 3.3% | 10,574 | 96.7% | 10,933 | 100.0% |
| P Education | 9,351 | 30.4% | 21,373 | 69.6% | 30,724 | 100.0% |
| Q Human health and social work activities | 6,792 | 8.3% | 74,871 | 91.7% | 81,663 | 100.0% |
[1] the number of civil servants corresponds to public service workers with civil servant status. There are also workers in the public sector with the status of blue-collar worker or white-collar worker.
[2]https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Glossary:Market_producer/fr. The distinction between market and non-market units is made using the institutional sector (e.g. financial enterprises, non-financial enterprises, public administrations).