The social balance sheet 2006

According to the 2006 social balance sheets of Belgian enterprises, employment on average increased by 1.3 p.c. between 2005 and 2006. It expanded mainly in small and medium-sized enterprises while remaining unchanged in large companies. Employment grew in all branches of activity except in industry. A marked rise was recorded in the number of part-time workers, too. Consequently, the part-time employment rate increased again, the rise being especially strong for the male workforce. Staff movements were larger than in 2005, but net recruitment fell to only half of the previous year’s level. A strong increase in the staff turnover rate was observed in some industrial branches. Hourly labour costs rose by an average of 3.1 p.c. between 2005 and 2006, to 33.1 euro. Their level differs significantly between enterprises according to their branch of activity and their size. Labour costs are higher in enterprises operating in several regions than in single-region firms. In the latter, hourly labour costs are weaker in Wallonia than in the two other regions. Performance in the field of training still fell well short of the targets of 1.9 p.c. in 2006 for the financial effort indicator and 50 p.c. by 2010 for the employee participation rate. The first indicator, that is, the training budget as a percentage of staff costs, was estimated at 1.2 p.c. in 2006. There was a further but small increase in the rate of employee participation in training : only 36.4 p.c. of workers had access to training in 2006. In Wallonia, the percentage of training firms is lower and the indicators calculated solely for training firms remain systematically weaker than in Brussels and Flanders. Finally, the Belgian results of the Continuing Vocational Training Survey (CVTS) for 2005 were compared with those of the social balance sheets. The proportion of training firms is far higher in CVTS, probably because of the intensive follow-up provided to firms involved in the survey. On the other hand, the worker participation rate and the time spent on training as a percentage of working hours are similar in both statistics. As for the financial effort indicator, the results are very different, respectively 1.6 p.c. in CVTS and 1.3 p.c. in the social balance sheets, while they were quite similar in 1999 when the previous survey was carried out.