Areas around Brussels had Belgium’s highest job density between 2015 and 2024, according to new figures published on Thursday by the national statistics office Statbel.
Machelen ranked well ahead of all other municipalities, with 2.2 jobs for every resident. Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, Zaventem and the City of Brussels followed behind.
At the other end of the scale, rural municipalities had the lowest job density. Berloz, Cerfontaine and Musson were the least well supplied, each with fewer than 0.07 jobs per inhabitant.
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Across Belgium, Statbel counted about 1.43 million businesses, or 0.12 establishments per resident. The highest concentration was found in tourist and residential municipalities, where there were more than 0.2 businesses per inhabitant, although many employed only a small number of staff.
Rural areas in the south of Luxembourg province and in the former mining basin recorded the lowest business density, often with fewer than 0.05 establishments per resident.
Statbel said the findings were based on a new method of locating occupied jobs. The approach takes account of employees working away from a company’s registered headquarters and places them at the actual sites where business activity is carried out.
Until now, annual business figures were based on legal entities and therefore counted only company head offices. This tended to overstate the number of jobs located in large cities.
The statistics office said the new data should provide a more accurate picture, but stressed that the figures remain experimental. It said the methods could still be adjusted to improve coverage and consistency.
Nearly two-thirds of the shift identified by the new method, much of which had previously been attributed to Brussels, came from public administration, administrative and support services, transport and storage, and human health and social work.
