One of the biggest challenges facing Malta is that 1,500 more workers are retiring every year than the number of people entering the jobs market, the minister of home affairs and employment said on Monday.
Speaking in Parliament during a debate on the financial estimates of JobsPlus, the government’s employment agency, Byron Camilleri said the government was taking action to reduce and discourage the employment of third-country nationals in sectors that did not need them while being careful to safeguard the situation of sectors that did.
The Labour Migration Policy was the fruit of broad consultation which was continuing, he said, with the policy set to be introduced gradually so as not to shock the economy.
The government, he said, had been particularly successful in raising the participation rate of the Maltese population from one of the lowest in the EU to one of the highest at 87%.
With Malta’s unemployment rate being at a record low and the lowest in Europe, JobsPlus was also increasingly focusing on education and upskilling the labour force.
“Upskilling remains a target and a challenge,” he said, because it was by raising its productivity that Malta could retain its competitiveness.
“We have a duty to continue to strengthen the labour market and the quality of life,” the minister said.
Why are 17 young people leaving Malta every day?
Shadow Minister Ivan J Bartolo directed his reply in the same direction, saying that while Malta was doing well, with a high labour participation rate, a high employment rate and low unemployment, questions needed to be asked as to why 17 young people were leaving the country every day.
These, he said, were often highly educated or highly trained young people. Why were they leaving? What was being done to retain them and what was being done to encourage those who had left to return?
It would appear, he said, that Malta was not offering enough diversified, innovative quality jobs which skilled people yearned for. The departure of these people was robbing Malta of business continuity. Malta was effectively becoming a trampoline where young people got a university education for free, and then promptly jumped to another country to realise their dreams.
Malta needed to discuss careers, not just jobs, because unfortunately, many young people were seeing low prospects for salary growth in fulfilling jobs. That, coupled with other aspects such as the high cost of property ownership and the environment, and even political behaviour was putting many people off Malta.
Bartolo said Malta needed to continue to invest in sectors which created quality jobs, but also work on new ones such as AI, green jobs, robotics, automation, and aeronautics.
And JobsPlus and the government needed to work on attracting Malta’s young people back by offering them incentives to resettle and reintegrate.
Young people needed to be offered stability where they no longer saw their country as merely a stepping stone for better-paying and more fulfilling jobs abroad, he said.
Concluding the debate, minister Byron Camilleri said a fact-check by Times of Malta had shown that the claim that young people were leaving Malta was false and the number of young people actually leaving Malta had dipped and a higher number were coming back.