Projects

The challenge

Despite an encouraging trend in the unemployment rate in recent years, the Brussels Region still has the highest unemployment rate in the country: in 2021, it was 15.5%. A total of 88,780 Brussels residents are facing the challenge of finding work. It is important to note, however, that the trend in unemployment figures in the Brussels Region has been particularly encouraging in recent years. Since 2013, the Region has seen a sharp fall in its unemployment rate every year, particularly among young people (between 2013 and 2019, the unemployment rate fell by 10.7 percentage points for this group). However, this encouraging trend came to a halt in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic, which hit two at-risk groups hardest: young people and the low-skilled.

In response to this context and the major challenges, particularly in terms of employment in Brussels, the Brussels Government has adopted several strategies. As part of the GO4Brussels 2030 Strategy, and more specifically objective 2.2 “Ensuring access to stable and sustainable employment for all”, Brussels Economy and Employment and Actiris, in collaboration with the social partners, wish to evaluate the performance of the activation policy and various employment aid measures. This project is part of this objective and aims to evaluate more specifically the relevance, coherence, quality of implementation and monitoring, efficiency, effectiveness and impacts generated by the following employment aid schemes:

• Activa.brussels and training incentive              
• Prime Phœnix 
• First Stage       
• Self-employment assistance                
• Mentor allowance and Young person in alternative training allowance           
• Reduction in social security contributions 57+            
• Career transition programme of the French Community         
• Integration allowance

In addition, the aim of the study was to formulate recommendations for improving this set of employment aid measures and maximising the positive impact they have on Brussels jobseekers who are furthest from the labour market.

The process & results

In this evaluation, we assessed 8 different employment measures. To that end, we collected a wide range of administrative data for each measure, we conducted surveys and interviews with beneficiary and non-beneficiary companies, we conducted surveys of beneficiary jobseekers and we conducted interviews with the social partners. This evaluation led to the following findings concerning the employment measures:

• Finding 1: A large proportion of jobseekers are supported by an employment measure, but only 12.8% of jobseekers with an activa.brussels attestation have actually activated it.     
• Finding 2: A small proportion of companies make use of employment measures, and generally on a sporadic and non-structural basis.
• Finding 3: Employment measures cover a relatively wide range of jobseeker profiles, but the individuals furthest from the labour market are less and less reached by these measures.
• Finding 4: Companies do not have a clear view of the various employment measures available and often find out about the existence of these measures through a candidate worker.
• Finding 5: Non-take-up of aid is not explained by the administrative burden and procedures involved in obtaining aid, but rather by the difficulty of finding suitable candidates who meet the eligibility criteria.
• Finding 6: Some measures are a source of great dissatisfaction for beneficiary individuals and companies because of some of their intrinsic conditions.
• Finding 7 : Supervision and training of assisted workers are limited in companies, even though the tasks required are often the same for both assisted and unassisted workers.
• Finding 8: Measures that do not always meet their initial objective.
• Finding 9: The windfall effect of the measures is significant for the 57+ reduction and the Mentor allowance, and relatively low for the Career transition programme.
• Finding 10: The 57+ reduction is by far the measure that costs the public authorities the most but generates the least return.