Older Workers Mobility in Belgium: Navigating an Ageing Labour Market and Reform Pathways

Belgium faces a marked demographic shift. The old-age dependency ratio is projected to rise to 48.7 by 2060, up from 35.7 in 2023. Simultaneously, green and digital transformations reshape labour markets, intensifying shortages and underscoring the need to mobilise untapped labour potential. Increasing the employment of older workers is not merely a social objective; it is a catalyst for productivity and growth. Yet Belgium trails peers on an essential metric: the employment rate for older workers stood at 59.4% in 2024, versus an OECD average of 64.6%. The true challenge is not only participation but mobility within and across firms, which enables better job matching and healthier working conditions as people age.

Mobilising older workers hinges on high-quality transitions. Voluntary, well-supported moves—within firms or across them—allow mid-to-late career workers to adapt to changing health, skills, and job demands. However, overall job mobility in Belgium remains low at 6.6%, well below the European OECD average of 9.9% and far behind top performers like Sweden (23.8%) and the United Kingdom (14.8%). Mobility also declines with age, dropping from 18.2% for ages 20–29 to 4% for ages 50–59. When moves occur, they are disproportionately involuntary, heightening risks of job loss and premature exit from the labour market. This article dissects the dynamics of older workers mobility in Belgium and presents a policy-driven path to unlock enduring gains in productivity and inclusion.

Analytics: mapping mobility, ageing, and productive potential

The demographic pressure is existential for Belgium’s growth model. A higher old-age dependency ratio increases the required productivity per worker to sustain living standards unless participation rates among older cohorts rise. The data point to a twofold imperative: (i) retain longer working lives by improving working conditions, incentives, and health support; (ii) enable smoother transitions when health or skills shift demand. In practice, these aims translate into four dominant dynamics:

• Longer working lives require an actuarially neutral view of retirement incentives and well-timed pension policy signals to discourage early exits while not penalising those with legitimate health constraints.
• Mobility hinges on incentives inside firms and across sectors. When barriers to changing job status, contract type, or sector exist, mobility falters and skills atrophy accelerates.
• Training and career guidance act as catalysts for mobility. Without targeted design, older workers underutilize available opportunities, weakening their match to evolving job requirements.
• Healthy workplaces and return-to-work pathways determine whether sickness absence becomes a retirement trigger or a managed transition back to productivity.

In practice, the Belgian system exhibits a mix of strengths and gaps. The social partnership tradition and robust Public Employment Services provide a solid foundation for policy experimentation. Yet the age structure, coupled with complicated governance and fragmentation across regions, dampens timely, scalable action. The next sections unpack these dynamics, linking them to concrete reform levers and expected effects on older workers mobility and overall productivity.

Key structural findings emerge when examining the micro-foundations of mobility. First, employment protection legislation, particularly tenure-based differentiations, constrains mobility for long-tenured workers. In white-collar contexts, seniority wages reinforce retention of older staff and reduce hiring flexibility. Second, age discrimination remains a stubborn barrier to cross-age transitions, even when health status and skills would otherwise justify a move. Third, participation in training declines with age, despite substantial public funding; 43.8% of workers aged 45–54 partake in training versus 28.8% for those 55–64, signaling design gaps in learning opportunities and incentives. Finally, the prevalence of long-term sickness absence—over 500,000 individuals, with roughly 244,000 aged 55–64—highlights a substantial health-management burden for employers and the welfare system. These elements interact to shape a mobility landscape that often misaligns with productivity needs and worker preferences.

LSI: active labour market policies, health-related work capacity, skill mismatch, and pension reforms shape the higher-level dynamics of older workers mobility in Belgium and must be considered in any comprehensive reform package.

Contrast: Belgium vs peers

Belgium’s relative performance on older workers mobility becomes clearer when placed in a cross-country context. Sweden’s mobility rate of 23.8% reflects a very different design: flexible hiring practices, strong active ageing policies, and a culture of continuous learning. The United Kingdom’s 14.8% mid-career mobility illustrates a middle ground with relatively lighter employment protection and more dynamic early-life transitions. Belgium’s 6.6% mobility rate sits in a middle zone of rigidity versus flexibility, reinforced by long-tenured protections and a compensation structure that disincentivises risk-taking in career transitions.

Comparative indicators point to several explanatory factors. First, Belgium’s pension reform agenda has sought actuarial neutrality but faces exemptions that may distort incentives for longer participation among workers with long career histories. Second, unemployment benefit reforms—cap and conditionality—aim to strengthen work incentives, yet the translation into sustained mid-to-late career mobility requires complementary active measures, such as targeted training, career guidance, and swift return-to-work support. Third, the Belgian system’s governance complexity creates additional friction. Jurisdictional fragmentation across regions and social partners, though beneficial for consensus-building, slows policy rollout and reduces policy evaluation quality. These contrasts reveal that mobility gains in Belgium are possible but require a coherent policy architecture that aligns pension signals, wage-setting, and active labour market interventions with the realities of mid-to-late career workers.

LSI: labour market flexibility, active ageing policies, skill-upgrading, and governance fragmentation describe the peer-based differences that help explain Belgium’s mobility gap and illuminate potential reform pathways.

Cause-and-effect: incentives, barriers and outcomes

To understand why older workers mobility remains limited in Belgium, one must map the causal chain from policy design to labour-market outcomes. The core logic follows a sequence of three linked drivers: incentives, capacity, and opportunities.

• Incentives: If seniority-based wages persist and notice periods for long-tenured workers remain rigid, employers face higher hiring costs and risk of suboptimal matches. This reduces willingness to reassign, retrain, or rotate older staff, dampening mobility and innovation adoption.
• Capacity: Without robust, accessible training and career guidance tailored to age and sector, older workers fail to upgrade skills or explore viable alternatives. Even when health status allows a transition, the absence of well-designed mid-career curricula leads to skill stagnation and reduced employability.
• Opportunities: Health management and return-to-work pathways determine whether absence becomes exit or recovery. Weak return-to-work support and insufficient labour inspections in SMEs contribute to higher absenteeism costs and lower retention, eroding productivity gains from continued employment of older workers.

The arithmetic of reform becomes clear when these chains intersect with macro incentives. Actuarially neutral pension bonuses and penalties, if implemented consistently, can encourage longer participation without penalising those with real career constraints. Coupled with a cap on unemployment benefit duration, such measures can shift marginal decisions toward mobility and continuity in work. However, exemptions that preserve long career advantages risk creating inequities. Policymakers must monitor the distributional effects to avoid transferring risks to the most vulnerable workers with shorter contribution histories.

LSI: active labour market measures, return-to-work, health prevention, and targeted retraining are critical levers for aligning incentives with mobility and productivity outcomes.

The health and safety dimension also shapes mobility outcomes. Age-friendly workplaces reduce job strain, a factor already affecting 15.1% of workers aged 30–54 and 13.6% of those aged 55–64, higher than OECD averages. When job strain is high, the appeal of mobility trips declines because alternative roles may be perceived as equally or more burdensome. Conversely, well-designed health prevention and return-to-work protocols improve not only retention but also the quality of transitions. Structural investments in prevention services, better worker protection for SMEs, and more effective follow-up after sickness absence can convert potential exits into durable re-employment opportunities. The causal effect is clear: healthier, well-supported workers are likelier to move to roles that match evolving health and skill profiles, boosting productivity across the economy.

LSI: sickness absence management, health prevention, and return-to-work services are essential to creating a conducive environment for older workers mobility.

Expert reconstruction: policy package and roadmap

The following reform package translates analytic insight into actionable policy. It clusters actions into four pillars, each with clear objectives, concrete instruments, and expected effects on older workers mobility and productivity.

• Incentives and mobility architecture
  • Align wages with productivity rather than tenure in white-collar and other affected sectors to remove misaligned incentives that discourage mobility.
  • Advance actuarially neutral pension bonuses and penalties for all workers, with safeguards to protect those with long historic contributions and irregular career paths.
  • Cap the previously unlimited duration of unemployment benefit receipt, paired with robust active labour market measures (ALMP) targeted at mid-to-late career workers.
• Age-friendly workplaces and health management
  • Scale up health prevention through targeted inspections and tailored employer support, especially for SMEs, to maintain productivity and reduce preventable sickness absence.
  • Strengthen return-to-work pathways with rapid assessment, workplace accommodations, and tailored job reassignments aligned with capabilities and health trajectories.
  • Invest in preventive occupational health to reduce job strain and preserve longer working lives.
• Mobility enablers and flexible work
  • Fine-tune time credits and flexi-jobs to ensure they support participation for late-career workers while avoiding skill mismatches across the broader workforce.
  • Limit flexi-jobs to pensioners where appropriate to prevent erosion of job quality for non-pensioners and preserve pathways for mid-career mobility.
  • Promote accessible flexibility that accommodates health or family needs, without degrading long-term career progression.
• Training, guidance and information systems
  • Increase participation in training among older workers by aligning design with mid-to-late career needs and by better targeting incentives.
  • Develop high-quality career guidance for all ages, expanding sectoral social partners initiatives to support inter-sectoral mobility.
  • Create a one-stop shop platform to reduce fragmentation, simplify access to training and guidance, and ensure equitable opportunities across regions.

Implementation requires a staged approach with a strong governance framework. Central to success is a metrics-driven evaluation system that tracks participation, mobility rates, return-to-work success, and productivity outcomes across age cohorts. The plan should leverage existing structures—social partners, public employment services, and sectoral training funds—while reducing administrative fragmentation that hampers rollout. A phased pilot program, starting with high-return sectors and SMEs, can generate early evidence to refine incentives, guidance, and workplace practices before scaling nationwide.

Other critical enablers include: building robust SME support packages for health prevention and return-to-work services; expanding sectoral training funds to cover mid-to-late career transitions; and strengthening the evidence base through regular monitoring and evaluation. In all steps, the objective remains clear: turn the ageing population into a dynamic, productive asset by enabling high-quality job mobility, sustainable working lives, and better matches between skills, health, and job requirements.

The Belgian model benefits from well-established social dialogue and a strong PES footprint. The suggested reforms build on these strengths while addressing structural barriers like tenure-based protections and age discrimination. If implemented with care, the reform package will increase older workers mobility, raise participation, improve job matches, and, ultimately, raise productivity and growth in the Belgian economy.

As these reforms unfold, ongoing monitoring will be essential to protect vulnerable groups and ensure that gains in mobility do not come at the expense of equity. The aim is not merely to push more people into work but to place them in roles where health, skills, and ambition align with market demand, thereby sustaining long, productive careers for Belgium’s ageing population.

In sum, Belgium stands at a pivotal junction. With targeted incentives, stronger age-friendly workplaces, accessible training, and streamlined career guidance, older workers mobility can rise from a policy aspiration to a concrete, measurable driver of productivity and inclusive growth. The journey will require persistence, calibrated experimentation, and a steadfast commitment to evaluating impact in real time. The potential payoff—higher employment rates for older workers, better job matches, and a more resilient economy—justifies the effort.

LSI: active labour market measures, policy monitoring, and inter-sectoral mobility ensure that reforms translate into tangible gains for older workers mobility and national productivity.

Closing the implementation gap: practical steps for Belgium

While the analysis identifies where Belgium underperforms, it often stops short of actionable, scalable steps that engage SMEs, regions, and social partners in a coherent plan. The most critical next move is a staged, governance-backed implementation package that translates incentives into real mobility, with measurable targets and transparent evaluation.

Actions to mobilise older workers should be staged and tied to clear metrics. Immediate steps include a central pilot board, SME health prevention support, and a one-stop platform for guidance and training. In logistics and eldercare, rapid return-to-work assessments can reallocate capacity quickly, while mid-career mentoring helps skills stay relevant. These changes lock in the gains from active ageing and reduce unnecessary exits.

Examples of practical steps: scenario A — a logistics firm pilots rapid assessments and flexible duties; scenario B — a small retailer uses the one-stop guidance platform and upskills two cohorts. Early results show improved retention and better skill matching.

These steps convert analysis into practice, with a governance framework that learns and refines, ensuring older workers mobility becomes a durable driver of productivity and inclusive growth.

What makes mobility among older workers crucial for Belgium's economy?

Mobility among older workers is essential because it prevents skill atrophy and misalignment with evolving demand by enabling experienced workers to shift roles, sectors, and job types without leaving the labor market, thereby maintaining productivity, sustaining incomes, and reducing long-term welfare costs; it also supports inclusion by offering dignified career pathways, mitigates regional labor shortages, and strengthens resilience during downturns by keeping people employed in roles that suit their health trajectory and experience. In short, mobility keeps a skilled workforce adaptable and productive through age-friendly transitions.

Analytically, this mobility reduces the mismatch between worker capabilities and market needs, lowers the risk of abrupt exits, and reinforces continuous learning—key levers for growth in an ageing society.

How does pension neutrality influence mobility incentives?

Mobility improves when pension signals are neutral or neutral with safeguards, as clear, predictable rules encourage later participation and make job changes viable without penalising long-time contributors; this is complemented by targeted support for those with health constraints. In depth, actuarial neutrality helps align long-term career planning with market opportunities, while safeguards prevent inequitable shifts for workers with varied contribution histories.

Analytically, better pension signaling reduces fear of earnings loss during transitions, enabling more mid-career mobility and better skill matching.

What role do SMEs play in improving mobility for older workers?

SMEs are pivotal because they employ a large share of older workers and have the greatest potential for flexible arrangements. By delivering health prevention, return-to-work support, and tailored training through subsidised or streamlined channels, SMEs can reduce absenteeism and improve retention; scale emerges when pilots demonstrate cost-effective results that are easily replicable across sectors. In practice, that means simple diagnostics, fast access to guidance, and lightweight funding for targeted interventions.

Analytically, SME-led pilots create bottom-up evidence and enable scalable models that top-down reforms can adopt with confidence.

What steps ensure effective career guidance and information systems?

Effective guidance requires an integrated platform that connects sector-specific pathways, training providers, and return-to-work services. The stepwise plan includes a one-stop portal, modular micro-credentials, and sectoral coaching that helps workers map current health and skill trajectories to future vacancies. In practice, users receive tailored suggestions, with clear steps and timelines, increasing the likelihood of successful mobility.

Analytically, coherent guidance reduces information frictions and improves match quality, which drives productivity gains and longer working lives.

How will pilots be evaluated and scaled?

Pilots are evaluated using a suite of KPIs: participation rate, mobility rate, return-to-work success, and productivity changes across cohorts; the governance body reviews quarterly results and publishes transparent reports to inform scale-up decisions. In practice, phased pilots in logistics and care sectors will reveal what incentives work, what training is most effective, and where to concentrate SME support for maximum impact.

Analytically, continued auditing and public reporting ensure accountability and evidence-based expansion.

What outcomes can Belgium expect in the next 3–5 years?

Short term gains include higher participation among older workers and better job matches. Medium-term effects are reduced sickness absence costs, higher firm-level productivity, and more sustainable long careers. Over time, these changes lift overall growth while improving equity by expanding access to mobility opportunities for mid-to-late career workers.

Analytically, the anticipated trajectory aligns with active ageing goals and a more resilient economy, provided governance remains accountable and adaptive.