The average number of hours worked per worker in Belgium is still below the average recorded before the Covid-19 pandemic, and the figure is predicted to remain at a similar level.
An ageing workforce combined with the rapid post-pandemic relaunch of the economy are being identified as the main causes of the tight labour market, widely considered to be the most important challenge facing the country. However, another hidden factor is that the average worker is performing fewer hours than before the pandemic.
While workers in Belgium spent an average of 359.5 hours per quarter working before 2019, they worked fewer than 357 hours in the first quarter of this year. This is around 0.7% below the 2013-2019 average, amounting to 2.5 hours per quarter per person, according to data research by De Tijd, based on figures from the National Bank of Belgium.
Below eurozone average
This overall figure does hide differences between the sectors. For example, the number of hours worked by staff in the healthcare sector, where the average working time per person was already lower, has recorded the largest decline since the pandemic. The figure is also noticeably lower in the industry, public services and education sectors.
Meanwhile, workers in the construction, communication occupations and banking and insurance sectors are performing more hours than before the pandemic.
A study by ING Netherlands shows that the decline in Belgium (-0.7%) is smaller than that for the eurozone as a whole (-1.5%). The Netherlands and France are closer to pre-pandemic levels than Belgium, while in Germany and Spain, the gap is a lot bigger still.
The difference between countries can be explained by the fact that some companies allow people to work shorter weeks in a bid to retain employees. Moreover, the arrival of more women and young people could also explain the trend, as they may be changing working hour expectations, and shifting priorities to a work-life balance.
Double negative
The difference in working hours since 2019 appears to be persistent and the number of hours worked per person is no longer increasing, but both a return to the pre-pandemic situation and a structurally shorter working week have important implications in terms of economic growth.
If it is a temporary phenomenon and everyone returns to the stable pre-pandemic level in terms of hours worked, fewer people are needed, which could result in unemployment rising robustly. The economic consequences of this could be painful, according to De Tijd.
However, if the average number of hours per worker remains structurally lower than before, the labour shortage threatens to become permanent, which could result in inflation remaining higher than usual, further hiking up interest rates, and thus slowing down economic growth.
