For Flemish employers, labor migration from outside the European Union is an increasingly important channel to fill vacancies. In 2023, Flanders allowed almost 16,700 non-EU citizens to come and work here, more than half more than in the period 2019-2022, when an average of 10,890 permits were issued annually.
The cause is the chronic shortage in our labor market. Last year, the Flemish employment agency VDAB had barely 2.3 job seekers available per vacancy. Remarkable: although the situation was even more dire in 2022, with 1.7 job seekers per vacancy, the number of non-EU citizens who received a work permit that year was 16,000 lower than in 2023.
It is striking that relatively many applications for a work permit are refused. Last year, 2,000 files were rejected. In the past there were at most 600 per year. The increase is mainly a result of stricter controls on economic migration.