The wages of more than 1.3 million employees in the private sector will automatically rise on 1 January as a result of Belgium's wage indexation system. Will your salary increase in 2024, and by how much?
Belgium's wage indexation system was introduced in response to rampant inflation in the aftermath of the First World War. It is the only eurozone country besides Luxembourg in which both public and private wages are automatically indexed to inflation.
While it has been celebrated by unions for helping to protect the purchasing power of employees, it has also been criticised as it further increased the wage cost for employers when they were already facing financial difficulties.
The indexation varies depending on the sector but is generally based on Belgium's "smoothed health index", of which the December figure was revealed last week. Some sectors, like chemicals and metals, index at a different time or work with a fixed percentage that is applied if the pivot index is exceeded.
Wage increases per sector
The top five largest joint committees – the social dialogue bodies at the sectoral level – with a fixed indexation moment in January, together account for more than a million employees and more than 120,000 employers in the private sector.
Employees in the biggest joint committee in the country, the Joint Committee 200 which covers more than half a million white-collar workers at 57,500 employers, will see their wages rise by 1.48% in January following PC 200 agreements.
This joint committee includes some 30 sectors such as the automobile industry, concrete industry, construction companies, call centres, consultancy, printing industry, garages, glass industry, wholesale trade, wood industry, advertising agencies, travel agencies, study agencies, tobacco companies, publishing houses, temporary employment agencies and ICT.
Credit: Belga/ Nicolas Maeterlinck
A slightly larger increase of 1.83% is on the cards for three other sectors in January. More than 158,000 blue-collar and white-collar workers in almost 27,000 hospitality companies (covered by the committee PC 302) will see their wages rise by this percentage.
The same is true for around 10,000 employees in the food industry (the committees PC 118 and PC 220), the nearly 99,000 employees in the road transport industry (PC 140.03), including lorry drivers among others and the 800 employees in fuel trading (PC 127).
Workers in the agriculture and horticulture industries (PC 144 and PC 145 together accounting for 40,000 employees) will also see their wages being indexed by 1.83%.
Food trade (PC 119 with about 37,300 workers, including butchers, for example) will receive an index of 1.48%. In logistics (PC 226), 55,000 white-collar workers in international trade will see their wages go up by 1.13%
Wages in the building management, real estate brokerage and servicing sector (PC 323 with some 13,700 employees) are up 1.48% on 1 January 2024.
Both electricians (PC 149,01 with almost 28,000 workers) and those in tile works (PC113.04) will see their pay go up by 1.13%.
The pay for insurers (PC 306) and intermediaries in banking and investment services (PC 341) will go up by 1.13253% and 1.48% respectively. This will have an impact on 29,000 employees.
Several sectors index wages several times a year, including now in January. For employees in the financial sector of banks (PC 310), the index comes every two months. In January, their wages will rise by 0.21%.
The more than 140,000 workers at 24,000 employers in the construction sector (PC 124) will receive a quarterly index of 0.44753% in January. Those in the wood industry (about 23,000 workers in the PC 125 and 126) will see increases of 0.44% and 1.48% in the first quarter of 2024.
For those in the cleaning industry (PC 121 with more than 50,000 employees), wages rise twice a year, in July and January. They will now rise by 0.93% (down from 5.70% in January 2023).
The January 2024 annual indexation rates are much lower than last year or in 2022. For example, the percentage for the Joint Committee 200 was 11.08% last year and 3.58% in 2022. However, the latest increase comes on top of this rise.
