Nowhere in Europe is the share of 20 to 64 year olds who are not working due to illness or disability as high as in Belgium. In total, at the end of 2021, our country already had more than 450,000 inactive people due to illness or disability (or more than 7.2 percent of the working population), and their number continues to rise. This is evident from a new report from the High Council for Employment (HRW), which was presented on Thursday. The HRW, which advises the government, investigated one of the most pressing challenges on the labor market: the increasing dropout rate of long-term sick people.
Because while unemployment remains low, the number of people who are disabled for more than a year grew by more than 150 percent between 2000 and 2021. The influx is increasing further (with the exception of the corona period), while the various measures to guide people who have dropped out back to the labor market have not yet had sufficient effect.
The HRW figures are limited to 2021. Previous calculations by the Independent Health Insurance Funds, based on a study by the Federal Planning Bureau, show that the number of long-term ill people – if policy remains unchanged – threatens to rise to almost 600,000 people by 2035. This increase is much more pronounced in Belgium than elsewhere in Europe, the HRW notes. Although social security systems are sometimes difficult to compare, the number of long-term disabled people fell in half of European countries between 2007 and 2018. “Based on comparable statistics, Belgium is one of the worst performing countries in Europe,” the report says.
Disability has increased sharply in Belgium, especially among female employees, in recent years. At the end of 2021, 273,000 women were ill for a long period of time (longer than a year), compared to 183,000 men. And while their numbers were still the same in 2008.
The feminization of the labor market and the increase in the retirement age for women play an important role in the growth in the number of long-term sick people. The general aging of society is also an important reason for the increase. In 1999, 25 percent of employees in the private sector were 45 years or older, in 2019 that share had already risen to 40 percent.
Logistics and cleaning
Institutional changes also play a role, the HRW notes. That time credit without a motive has been abolished, for example, or that early retirement has become stricter. Some sectors are also more sensitive to outages. Workers or people in more precarious jobs such as cleaning, logistics or family and elderly care become incapacitated more often. The most common conditions are mental health problems or burnout (37 percent) and musculoskeletal disorders (32 percent).
Far too few long-term ill people find their way back to the labor market. Two-thirds of disabled people leave the system within six months, but for those who have been disabled for more than six months, the return is much more difficult – especially for those over 55. After twelve months of incapacity for work, only one in five finds their way back to the labor market.
“The first six months are therefore crucial. Early intervention is important for successful reintegration,” says the HRW. The council wants to expand the target group for reintegration and refer more quickly through the health insurance funds. Employers must also be made more responsible with regard to prevention and reintegration. Other proposed measures include partial recognition of disability and a premium for people who voluntarily choose to resume work full-time.
HRW vice-chairman Steven Vanackere stressed the “urgency” of the problem. Certainly if Belgium wants to achieve an employment rate of 80 percent, it will not be enough to put all unemployed people to work, but inactive people (some of whom due to illness) will also have to be reintegrated into the labor market.
