Students were increasingly employed by Belgian SMEs in 2022, with the human resources group Liantis revealing that over one in three employees had called on students to fill labour shortages in 2022.
Linatis released the findings of their survey on Thursday morning, which showed that an average of 5.7% of student employees were hired by the queried SMEs, with no less than 32.6% employing at least one student throughout 2022.
As a result, the figure not only shows a yearly increase of students working for SMEs - 32.1% in 2021, 30.9% in 2020 and 30.7% in 2019 - but also confirms Randstad Research's earlier estimate that more students were choosing to work outside of the holiday period.
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For Matthias Debruyckere, one of Liantis' experts, last year's increase can be attributed to both employers and employees being able to benefit from student work.
Firstly, he explained that "employers faced major shortages in the labour market" in 2022, with over 100 professions said to be in short supply. Thus, it is perhaps unsurprising "that more SMEs have - out of necessity or not - engaged students as employees."
Secondly, Debruyckere believes that the low social security contribution of 2.71% that students have to pay represents an advantage to them as "they get to keep a lot of their wages." Especially given that the average gross wage was €12.07 per hour in 2022, an increase on the previous year's average of €11.62.
In any case, the number of student employees in SMEs is expected to once again rise in 2023 and 2024, due to a recent decision by the Federal Government to increase the number of hours they can work for. Indeed, students can now work for up 600 hours, while still benefiting from reduced social security contributions.
