One in every four people residing in Malta in 2021 was born in another country, Labour Force Survey (LFS) statistics show.

The statistics, published by the National Statistics Office on Tuesday, show that 51% of those born abroad were women.

The majority (78.1%) of the total were aged between 25 and 54. A further 7.2% were aged between 15 and 24 years, while 14.7% were in the 55 to 74 age cohort.

This is slightly different when compared to the persons born in Malta, where 51.9% were between 25 and 54 years, 14.2% were in the 15 to 24 age cohort and the remaining 33.8% were aged between 55 and 74 years.

LFS results indicated that, in 2021, the duration of stay for persons born abroad was on average 11 years.

Produced and provided by the NSO

The duration of stay was classified into two categories - recent migrants (residents for less than eight years) and settled migrants (residents for eight years or more).

Slightly more than 50% of people born abroad were recent migrants, while 49.3% were settled migrants. The duration of stay varied according to one’s level of education.

The larger share of persons born abroad with a secondary level of education or less were settled migrants (57.7%).

Meanwhile, 50.3% and 57.5% of persons with a post-secondary and with a tertiary level of education were recent migrants.

Results showed that the majority of migrants in Malta were born outside the EU as opposed to 36.2% of migrants who were born in the EU.

Almost 15% of migrants were born in Italy, followed by the United Kingdom (14.6%) and the Philippines (10.5%). A further 21.3% were born in another EU country while 38.7% were born in another country outside the EU.

This implied that the majority of immigration in Malta occurs from outside the EU (63.8%) as opposed to 36.2% of intra-EU migration, the NSO said.

More than 40% of employed migrants have tertiary education

In 2021, 38.4% of migrants had a tertiary level of education, 16.4 percentage points higher than people born in Malta (22%).

This was mostly significant among female migrants (41.4%) as opposed to 35.2% of male migrants.

The share of persons born abroad and in Malta who obtained a post-secondary level of education was equal (31.8%). Meanwhile, the share of persons born in Malta with a secondary level of education or less was much higher when compared to those born abroad (46.2% and 29.8% respectively).

LFS results indicated that 96.3% per cent of all persons born in Malta obtained their education locally. Conversely, nine out of every 10 persons who were not born in Malta completed their education abroad.

In 2021, 76.7% per cent of migrants were in employment, 14.5 percentage points higher when compared to the share of employed persons born in Malta (62.2%). The share of employed male migrants was 17.4 percentage points higher than that of female migrants (68.2%).

The employment rate of persons born abroad between the age of 15 and 64 years was 79.2%, 5.8 percentage points higher than that of those born in Malta (73.4%).

More than half of all persons aged between 15 and 74 years who were not born in Malta migrated for employment reasons (50.4%). A further 32.7% migrated due to family reasons while 16.9% migrated for other reasons including education, retirement or asylum.

More than 40% of all employed migrants had a tertiary level of education, 32.8% had a post-secondary level of education and 26.3% achieved a secondary level of education or less.

On the other hand, over 40% of migrants who were not employed achieved a low level of education (41.4%) and 28.7% obtained a post-secondary level of education.

More than 60% of people born abroad found a suitable job within three months of arriving in Malta while 10.5% found work within three to six months.

Most migrants came to Malta with no knowledge of Maltese

Almost 80 per cent of migrants reported hardly any or no language skills in Maltese before they migrated to Malta (77.7%). Only 7.5 per cent considered Maltese to be their mother tongue or had advanced skills in this language prior to moving here.

But the level of skills in Maltese for persons born abroad improved significantly once they moved to Malta with the percentage of those with no language skills in Maltese dropping from 77.7% to 48.6%.