Contract Terminations Surge Among Young Workers in Belgium

New data from Belgian HR firm Acerta, reported by La Libre Belgique, shows that the number of employees who leave — or are forced to leave — their job within a year of being hired rose by 16% in a single year. The trend is most striking among people under 25: 14.12% of those with an indefinite-duration contract (CDI) saw their contract terminated within its first six months, up from 8.4% a year earlier.

The figures land just before a significant change to Belgian employment law. Contracts starting on or after 1 August 2026 will be subject to a one-week notice period during the first six months of work, replacing the graduated scales that previously applied. The reform was announced in the federal coalition agreement in January, adopted on 3 June, and published in the Belgian Official Gazette on 15 June. According to Acerta’s legal explainer, the shorter notice period applies equally to dismissals and resignations and does not affect contracts already in progress.

Context & Background

The new law changes a system in which notice periods rose gradually with seniority even during the first months of a job. Under the previous rules, an employee with less than three months of service was entitled to one week’s notice, but dismissal notice reached four weeks between four and five months, and five weeks between five and six months. The reform flattens the entire first six months to a single week for both employers and employees.

The measure was part of the broader labour-market agenda of Belgium’s federal coalition government. It stops short of reintroducing the probation clauses that existed before 2014, when Belgium moved to a unified employment status. Workers who are dismissed or who resign in the first six months will still be entitled to a formal notice period — just a shorter one.

Key Developments

Acerta based its analysis on data from 390,000 employees at 31,000 client employers, as RTL Info reported. Early terminations decline sharply with age, and the hardest-hit sectors are hotels and restaurants (horeca), service vouchers, temporary work, logistics and transport. Most early terminations occur in companies with fewer than nine employees.

About one-third of the departures among under-25s are initiated by the workers themselves; the remaining two-thirds typically involve employer decisions, such as non-renewal of contracts.

Analysis

The new figures largely predate the law: Acerta’s data cover the past year, before the one-week notice rule took effect. They nonetheless provide a baseline against which the reform’s impact can be measured — and a reminder that early career instability was already rising.

Acerta stresses that the reform only shortens notice periods; it does not create a cheaper route to termination without notice or compensation. For employers, a one-week notice period lowers the cost of ending a recruitment that is not working, which may make them more willing to hire young people in the first place. For young employees, however, it reduces protection at the most vulnerable stage of their working lives, even as it makes it easier to leave a poor fit quickly.

In the sectors most affected — horeca, service vouchers, temp work, logistics and transport — flexibility was already the norm. “Career starts are particularly unstable among under-25s,” La Libre observed, and the new figures suggest the trend is intensifying.

What’s Next

Labour economists will be watching the first cohorts hired after 1 August to see whether the one-week notice period makes employers quicker to end new contracts, or whether it simply formalises a practice already common in high-turnover sectors. The bigger open question is whether Belgium’s youth employment market can absorb rising instability without leaving a lasting mark on young workers’ careers.