Flanders: Immigrant unemployment statistics

The share of immigrants among the unemployed has gone up starkly in the past ten years. In 1999 Belgians of immigrant origin and non-EU citizens made up 11.4% of all registered "unemployed job-seekers". In 2007 their percent has gone up to 16.9%, according to data provided by the VDAB (Flemish Public Employment Service)and reported by De Tijd.

De Tijd thinks this puts into perspective reports about successes with local actions. Several days ago it was reported the unemployment by immigrant youth in 13 major Flemish cities has gone down by 38% in the past two years.

According to VDAB statistics, unemployment for all immigrants has gone down since 2005. But this drop was less than by the rest of the unemployed population, so that the share of immigrants continues to grow. In absolute number, there's now more unemployed immigrants than at the turn of the century. Then there was an all time low of 22,000 registered unemployed immigrants, while now there are more than 30,000.

Source: HLN (Dutch)

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