70% of foreigners in Malta are in employment

70% of foreign citizens in Malta, aged between 20 and 64, were in employment during 2015, data released by the EU’s statistical office shows.

According to the same data, 70.8% were citizens of another EU member state whilst 69% were non-EU citizens.

The rate of Maltese nationals aged between 20 and 64 in employment was of 71.3%.

In 2015, the proportion of people economically active (employed and unemployed) in the European Union stood just below 70% for non-EU citizens aged 20 to 64 (69.8%), while the activity rate was above 77% for citizens of the reporting country (77.3%).

Eurostat said that a similar pattern was observed in most EU Member States. In detail, non-EU citizens aged 20 to 64 were faced with a notably higher unemployment rate and lower employment rate than nationals. The picture was very different when analysing the labour market situation of nationals compared with that of citizens of another EU Member State.

Activity rates differ most between non-EU citizens and nationals in the Netherlands, Finland and Germany

In a majority of Member States, the activity rate of nationals was higher than for non-EU citizens, except in particular in Greece (72.6% for nationals compared with 80.7% for non-EU citizens) and Slovenia (75.7% vs. 83.5%), followed by Slovakia (76.2% vs. 81.3%), Italy (67.9% vs. 72.6%), Spain (78.7% vs. 82.0%), Cyprus (79.3% vs. 81.5%), Portugal (79.0% vs. 80.9%), the Czech Republic (78.7% vs. 79.2%) and Hungary (73.8% vs. 74.1%).

In 2015 across Member States, the most significant differences between the activity rates for non-EU citizens and for nationals were recorded in the Netherlands (59.7% for non-EU citizens compared with 82.2% for nationals, or -22.5 percentage points), Finland (-18.8 pp) and Germany (-18.3 pp), followed by France (-15.7 pp), Denmark (-15.6 pp), Sweden (-15.3 pp) and Belgium (-14.6 pp). On average in the EU, the difference between the activity rate for non-EU citizens (69.8%) and for citizens of the reporting country (77.3%) was -7.5 percentage points in 2015.

Unemployment rate more than twice as high for non-EU citizens

Looking in detail at their respective situation on the labour market, the employment rate for non-EU citizens aged 20 to 64 in the EU stood at 56.7% in 2015, while it was 70.6% for nationals. The share of employees with a temporary contract was higher for non-EU citizens (21.4%) than for nationals (12.9%). The pattern was the same for the proportion of part time employment, which was more widespread amongst non-EU citizens (28.3%) than amongst nationals (18.4%).

For unemployment, the rate for non-EU citizens aged 20 to 64 (18.9%) was more than twice the level for nationals (8.7%). However, the share of people unemployed for 12 months or more was slightly lower for non-EU citizens (49.5%) than for nationals (50.7%).