The labour market of more than 100 days after the elections, it seems that a new Flemish government under the leadership of Jan Jambon (N-VA) is in the works as well. Even during his appointment as formateur said “Ham lake” to the top ” to want to look at the example of the Netherlands and the Nordic countries would like to follow. What does that mean for the priorities in the labour market?

Who is the European statistics on the labour market, to take, to see it straight away: to the North the European countries to deliver on almost all levels is better than that of the South of Europe. What is the most striking, are the differences in the employment rate. While the gidslanden’, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark the employment rate of around 80 percent, show growth, countries such as Spain, Greece, turkey, Croatia, France, germany, and Italy, do not exceed 60 to 70 percent of the time.

Belgium gets to the level of the European top performers is not. With an employment rate of almost 70%, we dive even below the average for the European Union (73 per cent). In Flanders, the figures are better (74 percent), but they are still too low in order to to the North the European countries to.

Stijn Baert, professor of economics at the university of Ghent, explains that the daily practice is to say that: “In comparison with the Nordic countries, we have less and less shoulders – seven out of ten, instead of eight-to ten – in order for the system to be maintained. The pie is smaller and smaller, and have more people to spread it. We can, therefore, be less generous towards, for example, people who are ill or retired at once.”

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