Slide in Malta's employment rate

Statistics issued by Eurostat yesterday show that Malta's employment rate has deteriorated over the past five years.

The EU statistical arm yesterday said that according to an analysis of the latest labour force survey for 2005, Malta's employment rate stood at 53.9 per cent of all those within the age range of 15 to 64.

In 2000, Malta's performance was slightly better with a 54.2 per cent occupation rate. The employment rate last year was nearly the worst in the EU, only second to Poland which had an employment rate of 52.8 per cent.

The situation is even worse when it comes to females with Malta having, by far, the least number of women workers in employment.

At 33.7 per cent, Malta last year had the widest difference between male and female employment rates, with a gap of 40 percentage points. The closest to Malta is Greece with a difference of 28 per cent, Italy, with 25 per cent and Spain with 25 per cent.

Eurostat said that last year, 197.5 million people aged 15 and over had a job or a business activity in the EU25 member states.

The total employment rate in the EU was 63.8 per cent, a slight improvement of 0.5 per cent on the previous year.

The best performing countries in the EU when it comes to employment were Denmark, with an employment rate of almost 80 per cent, the Netherlands at 73.2 per cent, Sweden, 72.5 per cent and the UK, 71.7 per cent.

According to yesterday's figures, on average in the EU25, 14.5 per cent of employees aged 15 or more had a temporary job last year, up from 13.7 per cent in 2004. The percentage of this category of employees varied widely across member states, from 2.7 per cent in Estonia to 33.3 per cent in Spain.

Malta fares well in this sector as only 4.5 per cent are employed on a temporary contract.