In 2020, 622,104 Belgians said they had a health problem due to their work. These are people aged 15 and over who are working or have worked. 55.4% of them have bone, joint or muscle problems. In second place is stress, depression or anxiety (25.9%). This is what emerged from new figures of Statbel, the Belgian statistical office.

In addition, of the 5,101,792 people who worked or had worked in the last 12 months, 120,198 (2.4%) Belgians had a work-related accident with injury. In 8.5% of the cases, it is a traffic accident during working hours. In general, men are more likely to have an accident at work, while women are more likely to report a health problem.

Note: These results are based on the Labour Force Survey. In 2020, over 26,111 people were surveyed about accidents at work and work-related health problems. Most of the questions were about the situation during the last 12 months before the reference week of the survey. For some respondents, this period fell almost entirely in 2019. For others, these 12 months fell partly or almost entirely in 2020, the year in which the corona crisis broke out and all kinds of measures were taken that had an impact on the way people could do their jobs. Wherever possible, teleworking was made compulsory or strongly recommended, and in certain sectors people could (temporarily) not do their jobs at all. The corona crisis has undoubtedly also had an impact on the results of this survey.