Research project P4S/251/BELAMAR (Research action P4S)
The socio-economic history of the Second World War in Belgium has been under-researched. In this field, the Belgian labour market remains a major gap. Institutional aspects (the National Labour Office) and forced labour in Germany have been studied from the 1970’s on, but basic statistical material on unemployment is fragmentary, mostly available only at an aggregate level and often based on German sources that are not always precise. Our understanding of the labour market in the Second World War is therefore partial and contradictory, with a one-sided emphasis on high unemployment at the beginning of the occupation.
However, case studies (e.g. about a German company operating in Belgium) indicate tensions in the labour market and competition for workers from 1941 on. On top of that, obvious questions such as the impact of the four-year absence of Walloon prisoners of war on the labour market of highly industrialized Wallonia and the possible consequences for female employment are not asked let alone answered. The same can be said about the interaction between the labour market and the high strike activity during the occupation; indeed, research shows a strong correlation between labour market position, the willingness to strike and success of a strike. Generally speaking, the labour market is a key component of macroeconomic development; an insight of the labour market is necessary to reconstruct the macroeconomic development under the occupation. A study of the labour market during the occupation also fills a gap in the historical data on unemployment in Belgium, which became recently available. The ONEM (the National Labour Office) study department has reconstructed historical series of unemployment in Belgium. The series starts in 1921 and runs until today, with the exception however of World War II. Figures were not available and, moreover, there are particular methodological challenges to calculate the number of unemployed due to the reorganization of unemployment benefits during World War II.
This project looks at the labour market from the perspective of unemployment and the evolution of unemployment figures. The concrete goal of this project is to supplement, on the basis of an in depth exploitation and critical evaluation of all remaining archives of the National Labor Office (kept in the archives of the military justice system and in the archives of the service war victims), archives of the Ministry of Finance, the Werbestellen (the labour offices of the German military administration (archives war victims), and AJ 40 – the archive of the German military administration in Belgium under occupation, kept in the Archives Nationales in Pierrefiette near Paris, archive repositories in Germany and from city archives (the Commissions of Public Assistance took over unemployment benefits during the Occupation) to compile a homogeneous series of figures on the evolution of unemployment (women and men) at the aggregate level, at sector level and, as far as possible, at the level of the districts covered by the labour offices. Based on these data the project will examine the evolution of the labour market during the Occupation and the relation with voluntary and forced labour in Germany (one of the policy aims of the occupier was to send Belgians to work in Germany to support the German war economy). This project will result in a database, an article for an international scholarly journal and data will be made compliant with the series of the ONEM’s study service, completing the historical dataset. For the general public, articles will be published on public history website of CegeSoma, BelgiumWWII.
