The case of the disappearing males

Last week`s publication of the data collated by the Employment and Training Corporation related to the labour market brought about the usual flurry of comments on the state of the economy. This data provided information on the gainfully occupied population for the month of January 2002 and information on the number of persons registering as unemployed for the month of April of this year.

It should be stated that the manner in which this data is collated is totally different to the manner in which the data for the labour force survey conducted by the National Statistics Office is collected and as such should be analysed on its own merits.

I would like to state at the outset that the importance of this data does not lie solely in the analysis of short-term trends, namely comparing December 2001 to January 2002; but also in assessing medium- and long-term trends. Short-term blips in the labour market are known to occur and have in the past led people to come to wrong conclusions.

I would just like to highlight one specific occasion when a leading trade union in this country initiated what it called a campaign in favour of work because of what it thought were worrying signals emerging from the labour market data, only to find out that in the months that followed we had strong employment growth.

On the other hand, ignoring short-term trends totally could be dangerous as these could well confirm themselves in the medium- and long-term. It is therefore critical that one makes the effort of seeking to find out what lies behind these figures and understand what is happening. We have always taken total employment and unemployment figures as being key economic indicators; and so they should be. But the micro data remains equally important for assessing the performance of our economy.

The January data looks worrying because the total number of persons listed as full-time gainfully occupied went down when compared to the previous January. The drop was of 162 persons.

It is important to note that the number of females in full-time employment increased by 270 during these 12 months while the number of males in full-time employment decreased by just over 430. This phenomenon should immediately flash a signal that what is happening must be the result of specific events.

If the drop in employment were the result of a recession hitting the whole of the economy, then the number of females in a full-time job would also have gone down as recessions are gender neutral.

The broad sectors that experienced a drop in the number of males working are identifiable. They are the public sector, and specifically the public service, where the drop was of just under 300 persons, and private market services where the drop was of just over 210 persons.

Within the private market services sector, one can identify the hotels and catering establishments segment as being the one that has shed most labour. In the private direct production sector we actually had an increase in male employment during the twelve months leading to January 2002.

Within the private direct production sector, the quarrying, construction an oil-drilling segment experienced and increase in male employment while in manufacturing the situation remained fairly static. Again this should indicate that the results that we have are not caused by a countrywide recession but by one-off developments.

The shedding of numbers in the public service should be viewed as positive given that there is practically general agreement in the country that we have an overstaffed public service. Although no data is available, one may presume that this reduction in numbers in the public service occurred in the industrial grades, where the over manning is not just serious but severe.

Unfortunately, the international economic slowdown together with the September 11 events that has brought about a not insignificant drop in the number of tourist arrivals have not allowed the private sector to build up a large enough absorptive capacity to provide alternative employment opportunities.

This male syndrome is reflected in other components of the labour market data, one of which is the self-employed population. The number of full-time male self-employed decreased by an odd 120 during the twelve months leading to January 2002, while the number of females increased marginally.

The other aspect, which requires attention is the labour supply, that includes the full-time gainfully occupied population and those persons registering as unemployed. This had increased by just 440 persons in twelve months. In 2001 it had increased by 900 persons over 2000, while in the previous two years it had increased by around 1400 persons.

This small increase is evidently attributable to the male part of the labour market, as while the male labour supply decreased by 160 persons, the female labour supply increased by 600. We all know that we did not have a cataclysm whereby we had the elimination of a large number of Maltese males.

This only means that we had a dropping out of a significant number of males from the labour market. Early retirement schemes and the closing down of some companies that employed males in their fifties must have contributed to this case of the disappearing males.

The restructuring of the economy needs to go through these developments as well. We have known that there has been an element of job hoarding and underemployment in the economy. Public sector deficits, a booming export market, a thriving tourism sector and buoyant consumer demand have tended to hide them over the last years.

We can no longer do so. The end result shall be a more productive workforce. In fact gross domestic product per full-time person employed increased from Lm9,420 in 1997 to Lm10,180 in 2001. There is some benefit to be gained from disappearing males.