A shrinking Maltese workforce, low fertility rates and education are the main struggles the local economic sector is facing, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana said on Wednesday.
Speaking in Parliament, the minister quoted Eurostat data which he said showed that, back in 2012, the employment rate stood at 63%. This had gone up to 81% by last year..
In 2012, Caruana said, Malta was 19th among 27 countries in the employment ratio.
“Last year, we ranked fifth, taking over countries such as Germany, Hungary, Ireland and Denmark,” he said.
“Now we have to work to be among the top three by the end of the decade. I believe we can manage to do this.”
Caruana said the rate of people with disability at the workplace has doubled in the past 10 years, and that Malta now has the highest number of female workers it ever had.
“This shows that, at the end of the day, a Labour government works, we took the necessary measures and after 10 years we are seeing the results.”
Shrinking workforce and low fertility rates
Yet, Caruana also focused on the challenges the Maltese economy is currently facing, highlighting first the shrinking "native" workforce.
He referred to recent Eurostat figures which show that Malta has the lowest fertility rate in Europe, at 1.13 live births per woman.
Malta’s fertility rate has been on a downward trend since 2012, when it stood at 1.42, with particularly sharp decreases between 2017 and 2019.
"In 1985, the year I was born, there had been 5,430 births. In 2021, there were 3,273 births," Caruana said pointing out that this meant a drop of more than 2,000 births over 40 years.
"Even if the fertility rate goes up, we will only see the benefit in the next 20, even 30 years," he added
Before becoming minister at the end of 2020, Caruana had been a key player in the government's push for the importation of foreign workers as part of the country's economic strategy.
More recently, his discussion has shifted to improving the local workforce and employment policy.
'We fail to recognise the value of education'
Another challenge, the minister said, was a lack of understanding of the value of education.
"If the country wants to compete in economic sectors, then we must have competent and trained people," he said.
"It is not enough to be happy that people are finding work, we must also look at the quality of the work. The government can provide more incentives, but individuals have to do their part."
Caruana said people who had a tertiary level of education earned more, and the difference in pay amounts could reach more than €1.5 million in 40 years.