To move towards the European employment rate target of 80%, set out in the Regional Policy Declaration 2024-2029, the Walloon Government has submitted its policy paper for the rapid reform of the employment, socio-professional integration and activation landscape for job seekers.
Wallonia faces a paradoxical situation marked by a high vacancy rate and an employment rate well below the European target of 80% by 2030.
The reasons:
- a large non-working population and an untapped labour pool, including a high proportion of long-term unemployed (45% of unemployed job seekers have been out of work for more than two years)
- a worrying 23% unemployment rate among young people
despite an annual budget of over 3 billion euros devoted to employment and training policies, the number of vacancies is close to 40,000, while the pool of unemployed labour exceeds 244,000 job seekers.
Six strategic areas
To achieve the European objective of an 80% employment rate, the Walloon Government has submitted a policy paper proposing a working method based on six strategic areas, broken down into 13 projects.
- Accelerate and intensify support for job seekers: Mobilisation from the moment of registration and regular contact to ensure a rapid return to employment.
- Involve job seekers at every stage of the process: Empower job seekers through intensive follow-up and the active monitoring of their employability.
- Empower the players: Clarify the roles of each operator and establish Forem's responsibility for both addressing and results for each player involved.
- Meet business needs: Structure and make training provision more flexible to overcome shortages, and involve companies and professional sectors in the process.
- Equip Forem with high-performance digital tools: Deploy a real single file and interactive tools for the optimised follow-up of each job seeker.
- Ensure rigorous follow-up and monitoring: Implement action monitoring and key performance indicators to enable continuous, dynamic strategy adjustment.