Highest unemployment in ten years

Over the past decade, the Belgian unemployment rate has never been higher than now, with the unemployment rate reaching 8.7 percent in June, according to De Standaard and Het Nieuwsblad based on the latest statistics produced by the National Bank of Belgium, which was published Friday. In absolute terms, the number of unemployed is very high. In July there were 610,893 unemployed job seekers. The report notes that the figure is boosted by seasonal effects, as companies tend to cut back on the number of temporary workers during the summer months. Nevertheless, it has been almost eight years since the number of job seekers in the summer amounted to more than 600,000.