Industry overview
The Professional, scientific and technical activities sector across Belgium comprises approximately 197,101 enterprises employing about 183,130 people and generating €79.4 bn in net turnover in 2022. The average enterprise size is 2 employees per firm. This is a useful yardstick when assessing whether your own operation sits within the typical scale band of the sector.
Profitability
With a robust operating margin of 23.8% of revenue in 2022, the sector reports €18.9 bn of gross operating surplus (Eurostat's EBITDA-equivalent, before depreciation). This figure provides the headline benchmark against which an individual operator can sanity-check their own bottom line, values significantly below indicate cost or pricing pressure, those above suggest competitive advantage worth defending.
Cost structure
The Professional, scientific and technical activities cost mix is reasonably balanced: cost of revenue at 61.7%, personnel at 17.0% and energy at – of turnover. Without a single dominant cost driver, margin management requires attention across the full operating envelope rather than focus on any one line.
Productivity & human capital
Each employee in the Professional, scientific and technical activities sector generates approximately €208,000 of net turnover against a labour cost of €27,000, yielding a productivity-to-cost ratio of 7.7. Value added per employee stands at €177,000 This is a headline figure to compare against individual firm performance when judging whether headcount is creating proportional value.
Trend & trajectory
Over the period 2008 to 2022 the operating margin moved from 16.3% to 23.8% (+7.5 percentage points), an encouraging upward trajectory. Sectors with stable or improving margins tend to reflect successful pass-through of input costs and disciplined capacity management; declining margins typically point to either over-supply or a structural cost squeeze that warrants strategic review.