Belgium - Labor Force

In accordance with the International Monetary Fund's website:

Concepts and definitions: Employment refers to domestic and national concepts. It includes wage earners, the military, self-employed and non remunerated helpers. In conformity with the standards of the ILO, the EC and the OCDE, these statistics cover all persons who have reached the minimum required age and who have worked for at least one hour during the reference period.

• Hours of work: The volume of labour measured does not entirely correspond to the European System of Accounts (ESA95) precepts: compared to the number of hours actually worked, which is the ultimate aim according to the ESA95, the method proposed here omits overtime hours worked in excess of their normal working hours by full-time workers. There is no reliable administrative information on this matter. The only—incomplete—information available comes from the Labour Force Survey and the Prodcom survey (for industry). However, attempts to make use of it have proved fruitless. There are no hours for the own-account workers.
• Employment-related income: The employment series are coherent with the series on compensation of employees in the national accounts. The estimation of the compensation of employees meets the requirements of the ESA95 and the SNA93. This concept is closer to 'labour cost' (in the sense of the ILO resolution concerning statistics of labour cost from October 1966) than to 'wages and salaries' (in the sense of the ILO resolution concerning an integrated system of wages statistics from October 1973). However, the available breakdown of the total compensation of employees allows to distinguish gross wages and salaries and employers' social contributions. Earnings statistics from a rather micro-economic approach are available from Statistics Belgium's structure of earnings survey. The annual survey produces estimates for gross earnings and its components, broken down by industry, gender, ISCO occupation, etc. but does not cover the whole economy nor all size classes. For the self-employed persons, there is only an estimation for the mixed income, it is not possible to isolate the element of remuneration for work done by the owner of the enterprise.
• Informal sector employment: There is an estimation of the employment in the black market. This estimation is coherent with the estimation made for the value-added in the black market.

Quarterly data become final upon release of the yearly data.

Further reading

Please refer to the summary methodology located on the International Monetary Fund's website.