Brussels is first in output, ninth in resident employment

A region’s production and its residents’ circumstances can tell different stories.

Among Belgium’s 11 captured NUTS2 regions, Brussels-Capital ranks first in GDP per inhabitant but 9th in the employment rate of residents aged 20–64. Its GDP index is 190, where the EU27 average is 100. Its resident employment rate is 66.5%.

The same region is 7th in life expectancy. A high production figure therefore does not place it at the top of every resident outcome, even within one country and at the same endpoint.

The denominator matters

Regional GDP records production within a territory. Dividing it by the number of residents does not turn it into the income of those residents. Commuters can contribute to production in one region while living in another. Eurostat explicitly warns that cross-border commuting and the geography of multinational activity can raise some regions’ GDP-per-inhabitant figures.

That is a measurement explanation for why divergence is possible, not an estimate of how much of the Brussels gap commuting causes. Our three captured series do not decompose that effect, and the chart is not an investigation of individual workers.

A useful way to read regional data

Compare production, employment among residents and health as separate observations. Neither resident employment nor life expectancy substitutes for household disposable income, which is not in this regional snapshot. An unweighted mean of the 11 regions would also be a poor substitute for Belgium’s population-weighted national figure.

Country-level comparisons already conceal local differences. Regional comparisons can expose them, provided we are just as careful about who is counted in each numerator and denominator.

Explore the six diagnostic models →