Today, 16.9% of the Belgian workforce is foreign nationals. In 2012 it was still 15.4%. According to a new study by Partena Professional, that is, the evolution of the number of foreign workers in Belgium investigated between 2012 and 2021.
The French are the largest group of foreign workers, moving from 3.43% to 3.83% of all workers. There are fewer Britons since 2012: Brits already accounted for only 0.35% of all foreign workers, but Brexit lowered that figure to 0.25%. Only the Italian group has seen an even stronger decrease: from 2.5% in 2012 to 2.09% today.
There is a sharp increase in the number of workers from Eastern European countries. The number of helping hands from countries such as Romania or Bulgaria has doubled in ten years (+93%) from 1.39% to 2.68% of the total. A notable exception is Poland. Until 2017, the number of Polish workers increased to 1%, but since then it has fallen to 0.85%. Workers from all non-European countries account for 3.9% of the total.
