The changing face of the labour market

Over the nine-year period to 2011 there have been several positive developments in the labour market, including a healthy decrease in public sector jobs, a respectable rise in the number of self-employed, and a  welcome  upsurge in the share of women participating in the working population.  But perhaps the most conspicuous trend has been the emergence of a huge part-time labour force.

The changing face of the employment market between 2002 and 2011 is documented  in a review of the gainfully-occupied by the National Statistics Office, released recently.  The number of full-time gainfully-occupied people grew by 8.2 percent o 149,297, 72.5 percent of which are in the private sector.   The private sector gained 20 percent over nine years, whereas there was a considerable fall (-14.4%) in the number of employed in the public sector.

Even if several reviews of the labour market have highlighted the low proportion of self-employed in Malta compared to some other countries, their number has grown by 10.8 percent to 17,634 and now represents 11.8 percent of the total.   Relatively high numbers of self-employed are associated with a more vibrant economy and a greater contribution by small and medium-sized enterprises.  Labour market analysts believe that  the education authorities need to work with the ETC to develop entrepreneurship programmes in our schools and incentivize employees to fork out on their own.

The increasing participation of women in the labour force is evident from their share of the full-time employed.  They now number 50,384, which is 17.7 percent more than in 2002.  Their share is 33.7 percent, which is certainly better than the 28.7 percent share in 2002, but well short of the EU targets.  Women have left their mark mostly on the human health and social work sector.

Part-timers, however, are the rising star of the employment market.  Their number has risen by over 66 percent to 52,371, of whom 43.5 percent are full-timers who also have a part-time job, whereas the rest are persons whose sole employment is part-time.   The highest proportion  (18.7%) of part-timers can be found in the accommodation sector, followed by those in wholesale and retail trade (17.5%) and education (10%).