Independent entrepreneurs

Methodological explanation The National Institute for the Social Insurance of the Self-employed (NISSE) publishes the number of active individual self-employed persons. These are divided into eight categories according to the nature of the activity in combination with the capacity of the self-employed person. By the end of 2021, the total number was 1,230,419. The Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS) provides Statbel with the lists of those same individual self-employed persons with their ID-Demo for the 4 quarters of a year. Statbel uses Q4 of each year. For the end of 2021, the total number was 1,223,374 or a 99% coverage compared to the NISSE In the CBE position list, the positions 00001 (founder natural person), 10002 (director) and 10006 (business manager), that have not been ceased at the end of a year, are selected. The CBE position list contains an ID-Demo for each position. So, the same ID-Demo can have positions in several CBE numbers. Since the coverage rate of the self-employed (91%) is much higher than that of helpers (29%), only the self-employed who are not helpers are retained for this statistic. Finally, for these categories, all active CBE positions that have a match with a CBSS-active ID-Demo are taken into consideration. This results in a total of 1,546,511 active CBE positions for Q4/2021. The ID-Demos add (via the CBSS) the categories, in addition to the gender of the self-employed person and the year of birth. In addition to the region, the CBE positions also add the Nace section of the company. The year of birth makes it possible to classify the self-employed into age groups (age). Summary: The statistic shows the number of active CBE positions that can be linked to a CBSS-active ID-Demo at the end of a year. The CBSS-active ID-Demos are restricted to the categories of self-employed who are not helpers. The combination allows us to break down the CBSS-active self-employed with one or more active CBE positions by gender, age group, region and/or Nace section.