Data showing a growing number of Maltese who are over-qualified for their jobs should be a matter of concern, the Nationalist Party said on Thursday.
The party observed that according to a Eurostat jobs and skills survey, over the past 10 years, the percentage of Maltese workers considered to be over-qualified for their jobs had risen by 5% to 12.8% of the workforce. Such workers have a tertiary level of education, which their jobs do not require.
The EU data also showed that 23.7% of the Maltese have a tertiary level of education compared to the EU average of 48.6%.
While there was need for greater efforts to raise the number of Maltese having a tertiary level of education, it was also worrying that not enough quality jobs requiring such a level of education were being created, the PN said.
In seven years, the government had created low-paying, low value-added jobs. Indeed the number of workers in precarious employment had also gone up.
The government had created jobs based on domestic consumption which drew an influx of foreign workers. This was also borne out by the EU statistics which showed that almost half of the non-EU workers in Malta were over-qualified for the work they had taken up in Malta.
And now, the architect of that policy, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana, had admitted that this influx was causing challenges for the country, the PN said.
This justified its long-held view that the government had failed to create new areas of economic activity which produced well-paid jobs and better living standards, it added.
The statement was signed by shadow employment minister Jason Azzopardi and Ivan Castillo, president of the PN workers' section.
EU survey findings
The Eurostat study found that 46.3 per cent of non-EU citizens between the ages of 20 and 34 working in Malta were overqualified for their jobs.
A further 28.2 per cent of non-EU citizen workers aged 35 to 64 were also found to be overqualified.
This was higher than the percentage of Maltese nationals found to be overqualified for their current job. Some 14.5 per cent of them, between the ages of 20 to 34, were found to be overqualified while those aged 35 to 64 had a 10.8 per cent share of overqualified workers.
EU citizens from other member states working in Malta also faced a higher possibility of being over-qualified for their current employment than their Maltese counterparts, with 33.7 per cent of EU workers aged 25 to 34 and 15.1 per cent of EU workers aged 35 to 64 found to be overqualified.
The highest percentage of overqualified non-EU nationals was recorded in Greece, at 78 per cent, and Italy, at 68 per cent.
Luxembourg reported the lowest overqualification rate (overall), with only four per cent overqualified nationals, five per cent overqualified workers from other member states and eight per cent for non-EU citizens. Lithuania was the only country were the overqualification rate for nationals was higher than that of non-EU citizen workers.
Data collected in 2019 showed that 23.7 per cent of Maltese nationals between the ages of 20 and 64 had received a tertiary education, when compared to the 48.6 per cent of citizens of other EU member states and 40.5 per cent of third country nationals working in Malta.
Additionally, 90.7 per cent of Maltese nationals, aged 20 to 64, with a tertiary education were gainfully employed while 92.9 per cent of workers from other EU member states in the same category were employed.
Some 80.2 per cent of non-EU citizens in Malta were found to be in employment.
From 2009 until 2019, the number of Maltese nationals overqualified in their place of work climbed by more than five percentage points to 12.8 per cent of 20 to 64-year-olds.