One in ten employees is aged 60 or over, 60 per cent more than in 2019

More than one in ten workers on the Belgian labour market is aged 60 or over, an increase of almost 60 per cent compared to 2019. This was calculated by HR company Acerta on Thursday, based on data from more than 230,000 employees in around 19,000 private companies.

The ageing population is also reflected in the labour market, Acerta said. Five years ago, workers aged 60 and over accounted for 7.23 per cent of the labour market. In 2024, this figure has risen to 11.5 per cent.

Growth is most pronounced in sectors such as logistics and transport (14.3 per cent) and social services, which includes the care sector (13.5 per cent). Sectors such as hospitality are less popular with the over-60s.

Acerta sees several reasons for this, including the increase in the retirement age and longer life expectancy thanks to advances in healthcare. But the tightening labour market also plays a role, says the HR firm.

Tightening labour market

"We get a lot of questions from employers about the ageing of their companies," Charlotte Pieters of Acerta Consult told De Standaard. "They want to know how they can keep their employees working longer, how they can properly guide their employees towards retirement or, on the contrary, how they can offer viable work for longer."

But this is not a permanent solution to the tight labour market. The over-60s will soon be retiring and are being replaced by smaller and smaller generations. The inflow of younger workers is also falling.

Acerta says the figures show how important it is for governments and individual companies to have "clear and workable" policies on older workers.

^{PHOTO © IMAGO/Guido Koppes}