Despite the profound stress, anxiety, and significant financial hardship caused by Covid lockdowns, a recent study has found that Belgians — as well as Europeans more generally — actually became more productive over the course of the pandemic.
According to a recent report by Belgium's National Productivity Council (NRP), Belgians' productivity grew at an annual rate of 0.9% between 2019 and 2021: a slightly higher increase than the 0.8% annual rise in productivity for the eurozone as a whole.
As De Tijd has pointed out, such an increase in productivity is actually fairly atypical during economic crises, when companies tend to cut costs by investing less in research and development, which are crucial to maintaining (and increasing) productivity.
According to Luc Denayer, the president of the NRP, the Europe-wide increase in productivity cannot be straightforwardly attributed to workers performing better from home than in the office. Rather, he suggests, it is more plausible that the increase is due to the fact that low-productive areas of the European economy (e.g. the hospitality sector) were suspended during the Covid lockdowns, while traditionally high-productive sectors (e.g. heavy industry) continued to operate.
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Despite the overall growth in productivity over the last couple of years, Belgians' average productivity increase is still far lower than it was in the 1970s, when productivity tended to grow at 4% to 5% per year. By contrast, over the past 20 years Belgium's productivity has increased at an average rate of only 0.8% per year, with Flanders (0.9%) slightly more productive than Brussels and Wallonia (0.7%)
The reason for this precipitous decline is an open question, although some economists suspect that it is related to the rising inequality across much of Western society, which in many cases has led to stagnant wages, poorer health outcomes, and anaemic growth.
