Average expected duration of working life in Malta is 39 years – Eurostat

A Eurostat study has found that the average expected duration of working life in Malta for people aged 15 years and over is 39 years among people working in the Maltese islands.

This is the tenth longest duration in the European Union, as calculated by European researchers.

The indicator ‘expected average duration of working life’ measures the expected number of years that a person, at the current age of 15 years, is expected to remain in the labour force throughout their life. It is estimated using the life expectancy and the share of employed and unemployed people in the population for each age.  

This recent Eurostat study found that the average duration of working life in the European Union, as of 2024, is 37.2 years. This makes Malta’s working life just under two years longer than the EU average.

In Malta, males work for around seven more years than their female counterparts. The average duration of working life in Malta for females was recorded at 35.4 years; meanwhile, the same duration for males in Malta was registered at 42.3 years.

Males work more than females in all countries within the EU and EFTA barring Estonia and Lithuania.

When comparing EU averages for 2020 to Malta’s most recent data, one may notice that while females work for nearly identical durations throughout their life, around 35 years, Maltese males work, on average, an additional three years to most European men in the workforce (42.3 years versus 39.2 years).

The longest working life duration in this study was found to be in Iceland; the EFTA country recorded an averaging working life spanning 46.3 years. Topping countries in the EU in this category is the Netherlands at a span of 43.8 years, followed by Sweden at 43.0 years.

The shortest working life durations found by this Eurostat study emerged from Romania (32.7 years), Italy (32.8 years), and Croatia (34.8 years). Other countries with an average working life less than 35 years were Bulgaria and Germany, both of which recorded a value of 34.8 years as well.