The gap between the high-skilled and the low-skilled, of whom 45.2 percent of 20-64 year-olds were in work in the first quarter, is 40 percentage points.
Highly educated people generally do well in the labor market. At 2.7 percent, the ILO unemployment rate (people who are not in work, but are actively looking), among Belgians between 15 and 65 years old, is lowest among the highly skilled labor force. If highly educated people are unemployed, they quickly find a new job. Of the unemployed highly educated, 56.4 percent returned to work after one year, compared to 17.1 percent of the low-skilled. Moreover, it is mainly the highly skilled who have a second job: within the highly skilled working population, 6.6 percent have more than one job.
But it is not only the highly educated who benefit. “Between the first quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022, both the employment rate and the unemployment rate will evolve favorably for both women and men, within all age groups, in the three regions and for any level of education,” says Statbel. The number of people with a second job is also rising sharply.