More women than men aged 15-24 active in Malta’s workforce

The number of working women in the age 15-24 category has surpassed the number of men as female during the fourth quarter of 2022, as female participation in the workforce continued improving.

Between the ages of 15-64, the participation rate of women stood at 74.3 per cent, up 2.4 per cent from the previous year. Meanwhile male participation rate stood at 86.7 per cent, having only increased by 0.01 since 2021.

Despite improvements in workforce participation, the gender wage gap continued to persist across most industries. The average monthly income for men was €1,859, while for women it was €1,697. This represents a gender wage gap of 8.71 per cent. In some industries, the gap goes as wide as 24.9 per cent.

When looking at the workforce as a whole. The rate of employment increased by 5.5 per cent compared to the same period last year, with 15 per cent of all workers opting to work as self-employed.

The unemployment rate was recorded at a staggeringly low of 2.9 per cent, with unemployment among youths aged 15-24 dropping to nine per cent in Q4 2022 from 10.2 per cent in Q4 2021.

The number of inactive people has also declined. Currently there are 158,246 people registered as inactive. The most common reason being retirement (42.5 per cent).

Care and responsibility accounted as the second more common reason for inactivity (22.1 per cent), a category which is almost completely occupied by women.

The data overall shows that Malta’s workforce is still growing, and the number of people not active in the economy is shrinking, however there are still certain gendered issues which are visible in the data which could be preventing an even higher rate of workforce participation.