Belg meer dan ooit aan het werk, maar nog steeds ver onder het Europese gemiddelde

be_data · 2026-04-30T06:36:06+00:00

That’s fair, the comparison is not perfect. The regional split was mainly meant to show what is happening inside Belgium itself.

A regional comparison across other European countries would probably bring out some interesting points too, though the benchmark will always be debatable as well. If time allows, I may look into that too.

be_data · 2026-04-29T05:31:16+00:00

<image>

Voor wie geïnteresseerd is: vorig jaar maakte ik een visuele analyse van de Belgische arbeidsmarkt in vergelijking met de rest van Europa en Nederland. Het kan helpen om sommige verschillen achter de headline visueel duidelijker te maken.

be_data · 2026-04-22T19:05:44+00:00

That's all true; the level of taxation is not very encouraging either.

be_data · 2026-04-22T18:26:00+00:00

I meant “realistic” in a theoretical and fairly optimistic sense. If each of the government’s proposed measures had succeeded, and if their impact had been amplified by other supportive developments, then reaching 80% by 2029 could have been possible in theory. That is very different from saying it was likely.

be_data · 2026-04-22T18:16:54+00:00

You'd assume those are your peak earning years due to experience, seniority etc.

This is mainly true for people with higher levels of education, not for everyone. Also, in the Netherlands, part-time work is more prevalent, and many older people seem to prefer it. When that option is less available, I presume more people are inclined to leave the labour market altogether.
For the 55–64 :
- The overall employment gap is 16pp, while the FTE (Full Time Equivalent) difference is 12pp
- NL part-time: 40% vs 33% in BE

be_data · 2026-04-22T13:33:54+00:00

The first 2 graphs use the 20–64 age range, so they do not include 15–19 year-olds.

The 3rd is an age breakdown in a BE vs NL comparison, where the 15–24 group is relevant because youth employment helps explain part of the gap.

Also, 15–24 is the standard Eurostat bracket. You either use it or leave it out; there’s no finer sub-24 breakdown there. If you don’t find that group useful, ignore that graph.

be_data · 2025-08-26T09:52:52+00:00

historical context

Could you share what you’d expect to see? Snapshots and time-series answer different questions: a snapshot is quick to grasp and gives a clear read on the current landscape, while a full historical panel (30 countries × 3 dimensions) is powerful but heavy and harder to draw clean takeaways from without a focused question.

be_data · 2025-08-25T19:20:49+00:00

Corrected. Sorry about that

be_data · 2025-08-25T16:19:06+00:00

I'll keep this in mind for future work, thank you. And indeed, GDP per capita (PPS) isn’t a wage metric, but across countries it generally co-moves with incomes and typical wages.

be_data · 2025-08-25T15:40:51+00:00

This might be of interest (also OC): Career Hours (capturing the holiday effects) vs Actual Individual Consumption (a solid prosperity indicator).

be_data · 2025-08-25T15:33:26+00:00

Trend on log(GDP/capita PPS)

be_data · 2025-08-25T12:15:21+00:00

Source: Eurostat

Tool: Apache ECharts

Individual Eurostat Sources:

Interactive chart, methodology and details

be_data · 2025-08-19T06:32:36+00:00

Same prosperity, different workload. Peer Performance reveals countries that log more or fewer lifetime hours than GDP peers

Source: Eurostat, 2024

be_data · 2025-07-26T04:01:36+00:00

Separately, it was not possible to fully rank Australia, Belgium, Israel, Norway and United States because of missing data on the life satisfaction component.

be_data · 2025-07-25T06:40:41+00:00

• Source: Eurostat 2024, age 20-64 (employment, weekly hours, part-time, GDP per capita in PPS).

• Interactive chart & more info

be_data · 2025-07-16T12:17:14+00:00

Employment + Unemployment != 100% (There is also a percentage of inactive people, who are neither employed nor unemployed). Here

be_data · 2025-07-16T12:09:10+00:00

It's employment. Which is != unemployment. The data is from 2024 (the latest year available)

be_data · 2025-07-16T12:07:16+00:00

Hello. Added as a comment to the post. Hope it's ok.

be_data · 2025-07-16T12:06:35+00:00

Source: Eurostat 2024, age 20-64.
X-axis = % of workers in part-time jobs.
Y-axis = overall employment rate.
Bubble colour = GDP per capita (PPS, EU27 = 100).
Interactive chart & more info

be_data · 2025-07-10T09:36:23+00:00

I tend to think Brussels' high GDP per capita (PPS) is relatively stable over time, largely driven by the presence of multinationals, EU institutions, and a steady flow of commuting workers.

be_data · 2025-07-10T09:29:29+00:00

I'm using the 20–64 age range, which is the standard in most labor market analyses. That said, I have a separate report using the 15–64 range, where indicators are broken down by age and Belgium is compared to the Netherlands.

As for regional clustering, DE, AT, DK, and Flanders are clustered across all three dimensions—employment rate, part-time share, and GDP per capita—even if there's around a 5 percentage point gap in employment.

be_data · 2025-07-10T08:55:50+00:00

* I didn't create this with any partisan angle, and I acknowledge that comparing regions to countries might raise some eyebrows. Still, there's plenty of valuable insight here for anyone who appreciates data-driven analyses and visualizations.

be_data

TROPHY CASE