The number of companies with more than 10 employees that recruited more workers dropped by 18% in 2017, the largest decrease within the EU, official data revealed.
Jobsplus head Clyde Caruana pointed out when contacted about the Eurostat data that such numbers tended to be “quite volatile for small economies like Malta” where the list of firms falling in the category indicated was relatively small, just over 3,000.
“A small change in the number of firms that qualify for such growth can lead to significant variations over time,” Mr Caruana said.
“Having said that, this figure is of no concern, especially considering the fact that the firms employing 10+ employees increased by 522 units over the last two years-and-a-half.
“The number of employees employed with such firms grew by over 26,000 individuals over the same time period,” he noted.
The Eurostat figures refer to so-called high-growth enterprises, which are defined as those whose average annualised growth in the number of employees exceeds 10 per cent over a three-year period and had at least 10 workers when the growth began.
Eurostat classifies such enterprises as those playing “an important role in contributing to economic growth and job creation”.
Apart from being the lowest in Europe, the numbers posted by companies in Malta were also significantly lower than those of other member states.
The second-lowest rates were in Slovakia, where the decrease was 10 percentage points below Malta’s, with growth dropping by eight per cent.
At EU level, the number of high-growth enterprises increased by six per cent compared with 2016.
According to the preliminary data for 2017, the number of such enterprises in the EU was 190,000, compared with 180,000 a year earlier.
In the period under review, the number of high-growth enterprises increased by more than the EU average in 16 member states. The increase was highest in Cyprus (57 per cent). However, the absolute number of high-growth enterprises in Cyprus was rather low (102 in 2016 and 160 in 2017), Eurostat noted.
Slovenia ranked second (20%), followed by Finland (19%) the Netherlands (17%), Italy and Lithuania (both 16%).