Unemployment rate in Belgium 2008-2022, by region

In 2022, the rate of unemployment in Belgium was 5.6 percent. However, there were real regional differences within the country. The Flemish region did particularly well economically, with an unemployment rate of 3.2 percent in 2022. By comparison: unemployment was more than twice as high in the Walloon Region, and over three times as high in the Brussels-Capital Region.

 Number of unemployed per region

  Although Flanders had the lowest unemployment rate of all three regions, the actual number of unemployed people reached over 119.7 thousand in 2021. The Brussels-Capital Region, which had the highest unemployment rate, counted only 67.5 thousand unemployed people that year. This is mainly a result of a demographic imbalance: the Flemish region has nearly twice as many inhabitants as the Walloon Region, and over five times as many as the Brussels-Capital Region.

Unemployment forecasts

  According to a recent forecast, the unemployment rate in Belgium was expected to decrease even further in 2020, to just under six percent. The Federal Plan Agency predicted a similar trend, with the number of unemployed people in Belgium falling from nearly 560,000 in 2017 to around 402,000 in 2024. As can be seen, unemployment figures exceeded expectations in 2020.