Professional mobility remains high
Transitions
Between 2022 and 2023, 94.5% of employed people remained in work, 1.6% became unemployed and 4.0% became inactive. Employed people who remain in work, do not all stay in the same job: about 340,000 of them changed jobs, or 7.2% of those who worked at both moments. Further, 43.5% of the unemployed remained unemployed, 29.5% found a job and 27.0% became inactive (i.e. not available for work and/or not actively looking for work). Among inactive people, 86.2% remained inactive, 9.8% found work and 4.0% became unemployed. This is what emerges from the last figures of Statbel, the Belgian statistical office, on individual changes in the labour market status in 2023 compared to a year earlier.
In this press release, the focus is on transitions on the labour market between 2022 and 2023 in a population of working age (15-64 years). The longitudinal nature of the Labour Force Survey makes it possible to measure the dynamics on the labour market. For example, is someone who is employed at a given time still employed a year later, or has this person become unemployed or inactive?
Working and changing jobs
The transition rate of employed people remains more or less the same than last year. Among the 4.9 millions employed people then, about 4.6 millions people remain in work, 76,000 became unemployed and 195,000 became inactive.
Employed people who remain in work, do not all stay in the same job: about 340,000 of them changed jobs. This is 7.2% of those who worked at both moments. This change can either be in the same or in an other enterprise, or by starting a business. This rate is slightly lower than last year (then 8.2%), but clearly not back yet to the low 5 to 6% rate registered before the Covid pandemic. The professional mobility decreases in different groups, among others in all levels of education and both men and women. ,The professional mobility of people people continued to rise slightly only in Brussels, among people over 55 and among part-time employed people. Although the rate of people changing jobs decreases, the rate of people staying in the same sector increases. People change then less jobs, but if they do, the probability that they remain in the same sector is higher than a year earlier.
Unemployed
The most volatile group is unemployed people. However, we observe that the rate of people remaining unemployed peaks: there are more people who remained unemployed last year (43.5%) than in the previous years. This is also a large group in absolute figures: almost 130,000 jobseekers in 2022 are still looking for work in 2023 and are available to start working. 29.5% of them are in work a year later and 27.0% are inactive.
Inactive
86.2% of the inactive (15-64 years) remained inactive. 9.8% of them are working and 4.0% are unemployed a year later. Among the 2.2 millions inactive in 2022, there are then still 1.9 million inactive in 2023, including a large group of students.
Methodological information
The figures presented here are the results of the Labour Force Survey (LFS), a survey harmonised at European level. The definitions regarding employment and unemployment that are used are those of the International Labour Office (ILO) to allow international comparison. We distinguish three ILO statuses on the labour market: employed, unemployed and inactive. The definitions applied are available here.
Please note that temporarily unemployed persons are temporarily absent from work and are counted as employed.
The Labour Force Survey is a continuous survey, which means that the sample is spread evenly over the 52 weeks of the year. The selected respondents answer a questionnaire mainly related to their activity in the course of a given reference week. The respondents participate four times: they participate for 2 consecutive quarters, then don’t for 2 quarters, and then participate again for 2 quarters. This way, we can observe what the labour market status of a given respondent is in a given quarter, and a quarter and/or a year later: e.g. is someone who is unemployed still unemployed in the next quarter and/or year?
So, if one speaks of a particular status in a particular quarter, it is by definition the status in the reference week. If one indicates to work in the reference week of quarter Q and in the reference week of quarter Q+1, they are counted twice as employed. There are, of course, a number of cases that were unemployed in the meantime, for example, but this is beyond the scope of our data.
The quarterly transitions are the sums of weighted observations of respondents who participated in the successive quarters (e.g. 2019Q4-2020Q1, 2020Q1-2020Q2).
The quarter-specific annual transitions are the sums of weighted observations of respondents participating in the same quarter of two consecutive years (e.g. 2019Q1-2020Q1).
The annual transitions are the means of four quarter-specific annual transitions for two successive years (e.g. 2019-2020).
Respondents who did not participate in one of two waves (= interviews) cannot be taken into account in this analysis. Respondents in the longitudinal sample are in both quarters at least 15 years old and at most 74 years old.
The longitudinal sample is calibrated to the estimated distributions of ILO labour market status per age, gender, region, level of education and nationality in the start and end quarters.
The published figures are based on the Labour Force Survey. They are no exact figures but approximations based on the extrapolation of a random sample from the Belgian population. This must be taken into account when interpreting the results. When the unweighted number of people is lower than 30, data should be interpreted with caution.
Definitions
The level of education is measured using a detailed questionnaire, and the people are then divided into three groups.
Low-skilled people are people who list lower secondary education as their highest level of education. Medium-skilled people are people who obtained a diploma of higher secondary education but not of higher education. High-skilled people obtained a diploma of higher education.
What is the difference between permanent job and temporary job
People who have an employment contract of unlimited duration are considered to have a permanent job.
People who don’t have an employment contract of unlimited duration are considered to have a temporary job.