The proportion of low-wage earners has risen substantially in Malta since 2006, according to figures published by Eurostat yesterday.

The EU’s statistics office said that while in 2006, 14.4 per cent of the country’s workers were in the low-earner category, in 2010 this figure shot up to 18.3 per cent – the highest growth among the 27 EU member states.

Low-wage earners are defined by Eurostat as those employees earning two-thirds or less of the national median hourly earnings.

For Malta, the average pay per hour in 2010 stood at €7.5. Those earning under €5 an hour are defined as being in the low-wage bracket.

Malta’s proportion of low-wage earners is higher than the EU average, which in 2010 stood at 17 per cent, a slight increase of 0.2 per cent over four years earlier.

The countries with the highest share of low-wage earners were Latvia (27.8 per cent) and Lithuania (27.2 per cent) while Sweden (2.5 per cent), Finland (5.9 per cent), France (6.1 per cent) and Belgium (6.4 per cent) had the lowest proportions. Nearly a third of Malta’s low-wage earners had low levels of education but only 2.7 per cent had a high level.

In the EU 27 states, median gross hourly earnings stood at €11.9 an hour, but the countries with the highest average pay in 2010 were Denmark (€25 per hour), Ireland (€18.3 per hour) and Luxembourg (€17.8 per hour). On the other hand, Bulgaria (€1.5 per hour) and Romania (€2 per hour) registered the lowest average pay in 2010.