The global crisis led to a smaller increase in the unemployment rate than in most other OECD countries as employment has been sustained through intensive use of reduced working time schemes. These schemes have mostly benefited workers with permanent contracts while the higher unemployment mostly affected workers with weaker labour market attachment. A main challenge for policy makers is therefore to avoid that the increase in labour market segmentation between insiders and outsiders that would hurt the most vulnerable. Over the medium term, labour market policies need to respond to the ageing of the labour force, which implies that an increasing number of workers with permanent contracts will retire. Thus, policies must focus on enabling the current labour market outsiders to get a stronger foothold on the labour market as well as to mobilize under-utilised labour resources. The wage determination system has allowed wages to increase faster than the main competitors and faster than productivity, leading to a gradual loss of cost competitiveness. Minimum wages are high by international standards, hampering entry to the labour market for many low-skilled workers. Unemployment benefits are relatively generous, and particularly for long-term unemployed. A complicated tax-benefit system has created high effective marginal tax rates and numerous labour market traps. This Working Paper relates to the 2011 OECD Economic Survey of Belgium (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/Belgium).
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