Statbel, the Belgian statistical office, publishes today the results from a set of questions that were added in 2017 to the Labour Force Survey. A number of questions were specifically addressed to self-employed people.^[1].

The main results are the following:

• 93.6 % of the working population say they are satisfied to a large extent (49.9 %) or to some extent (43.7 %) with their job. The satisfaction of self-employed people is somewhat more pronounced: 94.5 % are satisfied to a large extent or satisfied.
• 88 % of self-employed people say that they do not want to work as employees. Conversely, 92.5 % of the employees say that they do not want to work as self-employed.
• Only 1.5 % of the self-employed are economically dependent. These self-employed people work without employees and largely depend on one client for their income and for the organisation of their work.
• 27.6% are self-employed because it is the usual practice for this type of job.
• 32.1% of the self-employed do not perceive any difficulty as self-employed. For 27.6&%, the inappropriate levels of administrative burden are the main problem.
• Most self-employed (70.9%) do not plan to employ (extra) staff or to sub-contract in the next 12 months.

^[1]  The figures are the result of an interview about self-employment that Statbel, the Belgian statistical office, has coupled to the first interview of the Labour Force Survey, a survey coordinated at European level, in 2017. 19,925 persons of 15 or older with a job have answered the survey. Extrapolated to the total population, this represents about 4,638,000 people. Most questions were addressed to persons whose professional status in the main job is self-employed. A number of questions were also asked to employees.