In the Brussels region, just over 1,200 Ukrainians are currently registered as jobseekers. This is evident from figures that the Belga news agency requested from the Brussels employment agency Actiris. Eight out of ten of those job seekers are women.
At the beginning of May, the Brussels region announced that it expected up to 5,000 Ukrainians to register as job seekers. Since the start of the conflict at the end of February, there are 1,232 to be exact. The majority, 81.7 percent, are female and 72.1 percent of all job seekers are aged 25 to 49. In almost all cases they have an unrecognized foreign diploma, but 68.3 percent of jobseekers in Ukraine do have a diploma of higher education.
Actiris handed out 145 language vouchers for free language lessons in the past four months, of which 87 percent are used for French lessons. Just over half of Ukrainians arriving in Belgium report having a basic level or higher of English, just over one in five have a basic level or more of French.
Statement of few job seekers
The number of job-seekers in Ukrainians is not very high, but Actiris has several explanations for this. Many Ukrainians do not intend to stay here long, many of them have not been here long and first look for a place to stay or care for any children and finally there is a language barrier for many. Actiris continues to focus on providing information about (language) training and for this purpose it has two tailor-made counters with interpreters.
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