Which jobs are hard to fill in Flanders in 2026?

Every year VDAB publishes a list of occupations where filling vacancies is harder than for other jobs. The February 2026 edition names nurse and accountant among the largest shortage occupations. More than half of the ten largest are technical roles in industry or construction: site manager, construction estimator, industrial electromechanic, machining setter, technician for site, farm and lifting machinery, and industrial maintenance manager. Truck driver and horticultural worker complete the top ten.

Outside that top ten, hospitality staff, childcare workers and other care roles remain shortages too. One caveat: VDAB overhauled its occupational classification this year and says itself that the 2026 list cannot be compared with earlier years. So there is no meaningful "rise" or "fall" in the number of shortage occupations compared with last year.

The figures point two ways. On one side, fewer vacancies are coming in. According to VDAB's vacancy report, 237,953 vacancies were reported directly to VDAB in the twelve months to September 2026, 14 percent fewer than a year earlier. Statbel saw vacancies in the Flemish Region fall by 4,561 between the first and second quarter.

On the other side, the shortage list stays long. VDAB summed it up in February as a labour market that is less tight while shortages are stubborn. At the end of September, 219,430 jobseekers without work were registered with VDAB, a jobseeker rate of 6.7 percent. That is not a small number, but they often do not match what is asked: an administrative jobseeker does not become an industrial electromechanic. With a shortage occupation the problem is rarely that nobody is looking for work, but that the people with the right qualifications already have a job.

How this looks in the Netherlands is covered in our piece on the tight labour market of 2026.

First, adjust your expectations. You rarely fill a shortage vacancy with an advert that waits for the right person to respond, because that person is not looking. You have to find and convince them while they are still content elsewhere. How to approach such a vacancy is covered under hard-to-fill vacancies.

Second, look more widely for candidates. During its Werkweek in October 2026, VDAB itself pointed to jobseekers from Wallonia and Brussels, which according to VDAB have 144 and 103 shortage occupations against 227 in Flanders. Language and travel time weigh heavily, but for a technical role with a clear qualification it can work.

Third, your message. Someone who is not looking does not read an advert that starts with "we are looking for". They respond to a peer who shows what the work is really like with you. For which roles we therefore go out with the manager themselves rather than with a vacancy is explained under which roles.

What exactly is a shortage occupation?

According to VDAB, a shortage occupation is one where filling vacancies is harder than for other occupations. VDAB draws up the list with a statistical analysis of its own data on vacancies and jobseekers, then submits it to its own experts and to sector organisations. VDAB says the cause is often a mismatch between candidates and the profiles employers want, and sometimes the working conditions.

Does higher pay help with a shortage vacancy?

Sometimes, but rarely on its own. With a shortage occupation, a candidate compares your offer with what they already have, not with other vacancies. Pay is then a condition for being considered at all. What tips the balance is often the hours, the commute, the team and how concrete you are about the work itself. So say in your first contact what is better than where someone works now.

When should you outsource hiring for a shortage occupation?

When you lack the time or network to approach people who are not looking, or when the same role has been open for months. Then choose deliberately: an agency that charges per hire usually charges the most for scarce profiles. How that compares with a steady partner is explained in recruitment agency versus RPO and in the questions about RPO.

SocialFind wrote this article based on the VDAB shortage occupations list 2026, its September 2026 vacancy report and press releases, and Statbel's vacancy statistics for the second quarter of 2026, checked on 20 October 2026. If you would like articles like this in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.