There are almost 6,000 Italians working in Malta, making them the largest group of EU nationals earning a living here, official figures show.
Italians made up almost a quarter of the 24,483 workers from the EU, according to statistics for September 2016.
The British were the second largest group with 4,218 working in Malta. They made up 17 per cent of the EU workforce.
Nationals from Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania were the next largest groups ranging between six per cent and nine per cent.
Almost 3,000 of these EU nationals were self-employed.
The figures were tabled in Parliament recently by Education Minister Evarist Bartolo, in reply to a parliamentary question by Opposition MP Carm Mifsud Bonnici. The information came from the government employment agency, Jobsplus.
The number of Italians moving to Malta to find work has increased exponentially since 2013 as the island’s economy grew above the EU average.
A paper by an Italian social sciences researcher from the University of Cagliari last year identified Malta as one of the newer destinations for Italians who emigrated after the 2008 financial crisis.
Monica Iorio’s paper, published in Rivista Geografica Italiana, concluded that the exodus of Italians included many working-age people with an average education seeking job and business opportunities abroad. The fresh numbers confirm this trend.
However, the EU workers came from all the other 27 EU member states, with Luxembourg standing at the bottom of the list with just three nationals employed in Malta. The next smallest group – 28 workers – came from Cyprus.
According to the statistics, there were another 347 people classified as dependents of EU nationals.
These figures also exclude the 285 workers coming from Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland that make up the European Free Trade Area.
The majority of EU nationals working in Malta were men, however in seven instances, women workers upstaged their male counterparts from the same country.
More Hungarian women than men were employed in Malta. The same held true for Polish, Slovak, Czech, Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian women workers.
EU nationals working in Malta
| Italy | 5,724 | 23.4% |
| UK | 4,218 | 17.2% |
| Bulgaria | 2,187 | 8.9% |
| Hungary | 1,454 | 5.9% |
| Romania | 1,407 | 5.7% |
| Sweden | 1,175 | 4.8% |
| Spain | 1,151 | 4.7% |
| Germany | 1,059 | 4.3% |
| France | 934 | 4.3% |
| Poland | 860 | 3.5% |
| Netherlands | 504 | 2.1% |
| Greece | 428 | 1.7% |
| Slovakia | 359 | 1.5% |
| Czech Rep. | 341 | 1.4% |
| Finland | 338 | 1.4% |
| Latvia | 323 | 1.3% |
| Ireland | 314 | 1.3% |
| Austria | 307 | 1.3% |
| Portugal | 300 | 1.2% |
| Lithuania | 261 | 1.1% |
| Denmark | 225 | 0.9% |
| Belgium | 220 | 0.9% |
| Croatia | 134 | 0.5% |
| Estonia | 117 | 0.5% |
| Slovenia | 112 | 0.5% |
| Cyprus | 28 | 0.1% |
| Luxembourg | 3 | – |
| Total | 24,483 |
Source: Education Ministry
kurt.sansone@timesofmalta.com