The service voucher system is in line with the European Guidelines on supporting job creation by successfully transforming informal or undeclared work into regular employment and this in the sector of household services where there is large job creation potential.

The Belgian labour market has held up relatively well in the face of the crisis in Europe. According to LFS-data, unemployment rose from 7.0% in 2008 to 8.3% in 2010, but has since fallen back to 7.6% in 2012, achieving a better performance than the EU-15 (10.6%) and EU-27 (10.5%). However, employment rates are lower for the low-skilled, people older than 55 and immigrant workers. Unemployment for low skilled workers in 2012 stands at 14.2%, compared to 7.2% for workers with at least secondary education and only 3.5% for highly-educated workers.

Target groups such as immigrant workers have difficulty integrating in the Belgian labour market. In the employment population workers born within the EU-27 represent 6.7% and those born outside the EU-27 6.9%. However, in the population of the unemployed, persons born inside the EU-27 represent 8.2%, while persons born outside the EU-27 represent 23.1%.

Household work in Belgium has been characterised by a high rate of undeclared work. On the other hand the inclusion of the low-skilled, women (partially) and migrant workers on the labour market has been difficult. Unemployment for low-skilled workers is almost double the rate of average unemployment. This measure aims at integrating these groups in the workforce and combat undeclared labour at the same time.

The service voucher system has several goals:

• To create new jobs, especially for low-skilled workers.
• To provide incentives to transform undeclared work to regular jobs in the sector.
• To offer the unemployed the opportunity to move towards a regulated employee status.
• To improve the work-life balance for users by making it easier to outsource domestic work.

The service voucher is essentially a wage cost subsidy for labour-intensive, low-skilled domestic work. All residents in Belgium can buy service vouchers from the issuing company in order to purchase domestic help, ranging from housecleaning, laundry and ironing, to sewing, meal preparation and transport for less mobile people.

The activities paid with service vouchers are carried out by employees working for a company that is licensed as a service voucher company. These can be: commercial businesses, such as temporary work agencies or cleaning companies; companies working in the social sector, such as reintegration services; and public services, such as local welfare offices or communities.

The evaluation found a number of outcomes:

• New jobs generated for its target groups (low–skilled workers and immigrants): In total 150.000 people were employed throughout 2011 accounting for 96.000 FTE.
• The service voucher system has become well rooted in the habits of users. About 10% of Belgian population above 20 years of age used vouchers in 2011. This represents about 17% of all Belgian households.
• Impact on transforming undeclared work into regular jobs in the cleaning industry: Only 5% of the service voucher workers admit having worked in the informal economy before and 17% of users admit having used the informal economy before. Nevertheless, 45.8% of the interviewed service voucher workers consider that working in the service voucher system is a way out of undeclared work.
• Good quality of jobs created, thanks to the system of strict regulations: The quality of the job (in terms of labour contract, salary, working hours, training of workers and turnover) increases year after year and the service voucher sector has steadily been professionalising. A series of collective agreements has been concluded, covering nearly all usual aspects of industrial relations and regular collective bargaining systems. Gradually, the service voucher sector is consolidating and is considered as a regular professional sector.
• The scheme facilitates the work-life balance of users: The improvement of work-life balance is one of the most important motives of users to use service vouchers. The introduction of the measure has allowed some users to go back to work or to work increased hours. As a consequence, if the total number of extra hours of work of users due to service vouchers is translated to a number of jobs, the additional volume of working hours accounts for an additional 23 000 FTE jobs extra.
• The system has helped increase Belgian GDP through the creation of declared cleaning jobs and through the creation of new companies. The creation of new direct jobs and activities as well as the creation of indirect jobs trough the employment of staff workers and the increasing hours of work of users, has undoubtedly also had an impact on the Belgian GDP.