{"id":186640,"date":"2025-05-13T11:14:56","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T09:14:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.maintenance-expo.be\/how-is-the-labour-market-evolving\/"},"modified":"2025-05-13T16:39:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T14:39:40","slug":"how-is-the-labour-market-evolving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maintenance-expo.be\/en\/how-is-the-labour-market-evolving\/","title":{"rendered":"How is the labour market evolving?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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How is the labour market evolving?<\/h4>\n

Nowhere is the labour market tightness felt more acutely than in technical occupations. Increasingly, they dominate the lists of bottleneck occupations; what is being done about it? And what else can we do?<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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For years, some traditional jobs were considered the bottleneck profession par excellence. Nurses, doctors, accountants, cleaners… However, they are increasingly being overshadowed by technical professions. “Pipefitters, for example, are scarce and that does not promise to improve immediately,” says Melanie Sacr\u00e9 of PipeTech Academy, the training house that grew out of a collaboration of contracting and maintenance companies with VDAB.<\/p>\n

“Since corona, we saw the market change significantly,” she says. “Many people were looking for work closer to home, or they wanted to make a turnaround in their lives and do something completely different, for example.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Unknown is unloved<\/strong><\/p>\n

A piece of the shortage can be attributed to specialisation within the sector. There are so many jobs that each require their own training that it sometimes feels like a dense fog to an outsider. Sacr\u00e9: “What you don’t know, you’re obviously not going to train yourself in. That is why we try to put these jobs in the spotlight at trade fairs such as Maintenance, Measurement and Control Technology and Pums & Valves. We want to reach jobseekers, but also people who want to retrain, school leavers… and give them a taste of what these professions have to offer as soon as possible.”<\/p>\n

Their presence at the fairs also gives them the chance to put their target audience in direct contact with the companies where they can end up.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Solana: top in technical textiles<\/strong><\/p>\n

This Schoten-based company can already blow out 75 candles this year. They specialise in technical textiles such as filters, filter and spin cloths, and filter connections for older machines that no longer exist and for which the old filters are out of circulation. This is often custom-made and is still done entirely in Belgium. This allows them to respond quickly to urgent requests and ensures the quality of the manufacturing process. All major laundries in the country are already fans (and customers).<\/p>\n

In addition, Solana is also a fan of Maintenance, where they have already met many useful contacts in recent years. An interaction between exhibitors and visitors: that’s what we stand for.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Rising interest<\/strong><\/p>\n

The latter is also a key driver for Acta, a loyal partner of M+R. “We keep meeting our current customers here and coming into contact with new interested parties who care about applied training,” says Kaat Carron, lecturer at Acta. They offer in-service training, courses and training programmes (both general and customised) to final-year students, job seekers, lateral entrants and companies.<\/p>\n

“In recent years, we have seen an increasing interest in our offerings, which is nevertheless encouraging,” she says. Consequently, companies are increasingly betting on it. “They see it as an added benefit they can offer their employees. The world is changing rapidly and by continuing to train their people, everyone wins. For example, we are currently working hard on new training courses around AI and digitalisation.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Betting on concrete demand<\/strong><\/p>\n

So does BEMAS, a loyal partner of Maintenance. They focus on training for middle management, from work preparation and production planning to ERP packages. “We always keep our eyes open for trends in the market and currently AI is definitely one of the most important ones,” confirms Celina De Frenne of BEMAS.<\/p>\n

“There are always new obligations around cybersecurity and sustainability that companies don’t always know how to deal with. We then focus our training on those question marks, so they can get started with well-trained employees who can respond to the needs in the workplace.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Love for work<\/strong><\/p>\n

That it is a great sector that perhaps gets a little too little love, everyone agrees. This is also confirmed by Sacr\u00e9: “It is a great sector, with many advantages. We offer particularly strong training, a great job opportunity, a varied job that can be both indoors and outdoors,… Pipelines are everywhere, from water plants to beer brewers; driving along the motorway you see them everywhere. They literally connect sectors. Worthwhile, therefore, to get acquainted with what we have to offer.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How is the labour market evolving? Nowhere is the labour market tightness felt more acutely than in technical occupations. Increasingly, they dominate the lists of bottleneck occupations; what is being done about it? And what else can we do? For years, some traditional jobs were considered the bottleneck profession par excellence. Nurses, doctors, accountants, cleaners… […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1351,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"edition":[],"class_list":["post-186640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maintenance-expo.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maintenance-expo.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maintenance-expo.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maintenance-expo.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1351"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maintenance-expo.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186640"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.maintenance-expo.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186662,"href":"https:\/\/www.maintenance-expo.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186640\/revisions\/186662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maintenance-expo.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maintenance-expo.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maintenance-expo.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186640"},{"taxonomy":"edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maintenance-expo.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/edition?post=186640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}