Low-wage earners in Malta higher than the EU average

The proportion of low-wage earners in Malta who earn 66% or less of the national median gross hourly earnings, are higher than the EU average.

Malta's low-wage earners total 18.3% of the workforce, according to data provided by Eurostat, compared to the EU27's 17%.

The same data shows that such employees tend to be paid just over the national minimum wage of €4.05, at a low-wage threshold of €5 per hour.

The figures also show that 22.4% of the female workforce are low-wage earners, compared to men (15.6%); while 29.7% of the workforce with a low level of education (29.5%) are low-wage earners, compared to medium (11.3%) or high (2.7%) levels of education.

27.7% of those on a fixed duration contract tend to be paid low wages.

The proportion of low-wage earners among employees amounted to 17% in 2010 in the EU27. This proportion varied significantly between Member States, with the highest percentages observed in Latvia (27.8%), Lithuania (27.2%), Romania (25.6%), Poland (24.2%) and Estonia (23.8%), and the lowest in Sweden (2.5%), Finland (5.9%), France (6.1%), Belgium (6.4%) and Denmark (7.7%).

There are large differences between men and women regarding the proportion of low-wage earners. In the EU27 in 2010, 21.2% of female employees were low-wage earners, compared with 13.3% of male employees. In all Member States, except Bulgaria, there was a larger share of female employees who were low-wage earners than male. The highest proportions for women were registered in Cyprus (31.4%), Estonia (30.1%), Lithuania (29.4%), Germany and Latvia (both 28.7%) and the United Kingdom (27.6%), and the smallest in Sweden (3.1%), France (7.9%), Finland (8%) and Denmark (9.8%).

The level of education plays an important role: the lower the level, the higher is the likelihood of being a low-wage earner. In the EU27 in 2010, 29% of employees with a low education level were low-wage earners, compared with 19.3% of those with a medium⁶ level and 5.8% of those with a high level. More than half of employees with a low level of education in Germany (54.6%) and Slovakia (51.5%) were low wage earners, and almost half in Romania (49.4%).

The type of contract also has a significant impact. In the EU27 in 2010, 31.3% of employees with a contract of limited duration were low-wage earners, compared with 15.7% for those with an indefinite contract. In all Member States, except Estonia and Cyprus, the pattern was the same. The largest proportions of low-wage earners among employees with a contract of limited duration were observed in the Netherlands (47.9%), Poland (42.5%), Germany (38%), Bulgaria (36.9%), Hungary and the United Kingdom (both 36.4%).