In 2021, again more new employment than terminations

SD Worx, Belgium's largest payroll calculator, sees a positive trend in structural employment with SMEs in the private sector.

SD Worx calculated that, once again, more jobs will be added to our existing SMEs than will be lost, resulting in a positive balance (+0.90% in 2021). There were even slightly fewer contract terminations on average than in 2019 (i.e., 2.09% instead of 2.13%). As in past years, December and January are months with more contract terminations. In terms of recruitment, our Belgian SMEs are doing better in 2021 than in 2020, but we are not yet at the level of before the corona crisis (2019). These are the new insights from SD Worx's longitudinal analysis of payroll data from more than 21.000 SME entrepreneurs with more than 370,000 employees over the last 3 years in the private sector in Belgium:

• Structural employment among existing SME employers shows a positive trend for the full year 2021; job losses (outflows of 2.09%) even fall slightly below the (normal) 2019 level (2.13%). The share of new employment (inflow) increases from 1.98% in 2020 to 2.12%, which is however below the 2019 level (2.25%).
• There are again more employers (13.31%) recruiting in 2021 than in 2020; and fewer employers facing contract terminations (12.81%); there we are even at the (normal) level of 2019;
• For SMEs, we see a slightly positive evolution in employment volume (in number of employees) in 2021; that was ago from 2019. Last year, for SMEs, employment increased by 0.90%. Compared to the beginning of 2019, the number of jobs in SMEs increased by 1.72%.
• In terms of sectors, employment in 'transport and storage' and 'hospitality' has still not recovered from the crisis. The employment volume in SMEs (in number of jobs) increased in four sectors, namely financial services, liberal professions, scientific and technical activities, information and communication, and health care. All other sectors are stable to slightly positive.
• For Belgium, we are now back to the May 2021 level of employment, which is not much higher than April 2019. By analysing the number of jobs in the past three years of more than 20,000 employers via the SD Worx SME Jobindex, SD Worx is able to present the latest trends.