More Belgian couples working full time, data shows

The share of Belgian couples in which both partners work full time has increased significantly in recent years, new data from Statbel, the Belgian statistical office, has found.

According to Statbel, the share of heterosexual couples where both partners work full-time has risen from 34.2% in 1999 to 46.4% in 2023.

In tandem, the relationship format in which the man works full-time and the woman doesn’t work at all has declined from around a quarter (25.6%) in 1999 to 14.2% in 2023.

As of 2023, around a quarter (26.2%) of Belgian couples had an arrangement in which the man worked full-time and the woman worked part-time, while other combinations, such as where the man works part-time or not at all, slightly increased, from 11.1% in 1999 to 13.2% in 2023, the data showed.

Couples with children

According to Stabel, the work situation for Belgian couples depends on the number of children in the household – for example, in couples with no children, more than three fifths (61.3%) of couples have both partners working full-time.

‘When the couple has one or two children, that percentage drops to about 46%, and to 24.5% for couples with three or more children,’ Statbel noted. ‘We see that it is mainly women who work part-time or not at all when there are children in the household, while men continue to work full-time. Only when the couple has three or more children does the proportion of work combinations in which the man does not work full-time rise to one-fifth of couples.’

Among same-sex couples, two-thirds of male couples (66.3%) both work full-time, while only 48% of female couples do so, the data showed. Read more here.