Job multiplier effect in the Belgian arms production industry

Arms and military equipment production employs several thousand workers in the 71 companies identified in the GRIP database, but it also has effects on the employment of the Belgian economy as a whole. These effects are measured by different types of jobs multipliers defined by the Federal Planning Bureau for each sector of activity in Belgium.

These multipliers make it possible to estimate the total employment that will be created in the whole of the Belgian economy (in the firms, in the suppliers chain and by the consumption of the households) when a company has to increase its production to respond to an additional exogenous final demand. According to this methodology, GRIP estimates the total employment generated in Belgium by the production of weapons and military equipment at 11,403 jobs in 2017.