Malta's job growth among EU's highest

Malta was one of the strongest performers in the EU last year when it came to employment growth, according to a new report issued by the European Commission yesterday.

In its spring issue of the Employment Quarterly Report, the European Commission said that last year Malta was the third best ranking EU member state where it comes to job creation.

At the end of last year, Malta managed to post an annual employment growth of 3.7 per cent, the third best in the EU 27 following Latvia (5.1 per cent) and Ireland (3.9 per cent). The average employment growth in the EU last year stood at 1.5 per cent.

As a consequence, the report also shows a steady drop in the number of unemployed people in Malta which by the end of last March stood at 5.7 per cent of all those seeking to work, almost one percentage point less than 12 months before.

The average unemployment rate in the EU stood at 6.7 per cent.

The Commission said that Malta managed to reduce unemployment across the board but ranked best in the EU where it comes to youth unemployment among 15-24 year olds, managing to reduce the unemployed in this category by a staggering 3.3 per cent in just 12 months. On the other hand, despite strong employment performance, the Commission said that Malta is still lagging behind when it comes to the employment rate - the number of people capable of working and who have a job.

By the end of last year, Malta's employment rate improved slightly over the previous 12 months by 0.6 per cent to reach 55.7 per cent - the lowest in the EU 27. This is primarily due to a low female participation rate in the Maltese employment market, which despite increasing by 2.3 per cent last year is still the lowest in Europe at 37.7 per cent. The closest to Malta's female employment situation is neighbouring Italy with the number of females having a paid-job reaching 46.9 per cent.

Overall the EU report shows a still solid overall performance in the EU labour market, although the pace of improvement appears to be slowing. By the fourth quarter of last year, total employment had increased by 3.3 million from a year earlier to reach 224.5 million, while unemployment had dropped to 16.1 million by the first quarter of 2008.

However, quarterly employment growth halved in the last quarter of last year after the strong performance at the beginning of the year, and recent forecasts suggest that the unemployment rate may well bottom out this year.