1,343 sex workers add €24 million to Malta’s economy – NSO

A review of economic data to comply with international requirements has resulted in a boost to Malta’s national income from an unexpected quarter: prostitution.

A line buried in a technical document published by the National Statistics Office (NSO) reveals a €24 million increase to Malta’s gross national income (GNI) for 2022, based on a new estimation of the impact of sex work* on the economy.

The calculation estimates the total revenue generated by prostitution in Malta, which is treated as income generated within the country and added to the country’s GNI. The €24 million represents the estimated economic activity of the sex work sector in 2022, which contributed 0.1 per cent of Malta’s GNI.

Responding to questions posed by BusinessNow.mt, the NSO shared several intriguing findings that shed light on the nature and prevalence of prostitution in Malta.

The NSO’s exercise calculates that the number of street prostitutes plummeted from 226 to just 30 between 2010 and 2022, but the number of escorts advertising their services online ballooned from 194 to 1,054 over the same period.

Workers in ‘massage parlours’ – known as a front for sex work – increased from 48 to 259 over the period.

That means that the number of escorts and sex workers in ‘massage parlours’ experienced a more than five-fold increase over the 12 years between 2010 and 2022, while prostitutes working the streets fell by 87 per cent.

The total number of prostitutes in Malta therefore doubled from 467 in 2010, representing 0.11 per cent of the population, to 1,343 in 2022, representing 0.25 per cent of the population.

The percentage of Maltese citizens engaged in the ‘world’s oldest profession’, however, is very low. The NSO estimates that just five per cent of all sex workers in parlours are Maltese, with the figure dropping to just two per cent in the case of escorts.

Meanwhile, ‘touring’ sex workers made up some seven per cent of all prostitutes. These generally command higher prices, said the NSO, which quoted an average price of €240 for an outcall – that is, a service provided at the client’s choice of location.

Resident escorts charged an average of €181 for an outcall.

The average price for one hour with an escort at their own location – an in-call – was estimated to be €185 for touring sex workers and €127 for resident ones.

The prices charged in massage parlours, obtained from newspaper reports on court proceedings on illegal brothels, averaged €50 per half hour.

Information obtained from researchers who work in the field suggested that the price charged by street prostitutes was €25, with no information provided on the duration.

Calculating the number of contacts per prostitute per day proved tricky, as averages obtained from newspaper reports and research initially indicated that a huge percentage of Malta’s adult male population and male tourists engaged in commercial sex.

“The initial estimates based on nine clients per day for massage parlours and half that number for escorts resulted in an approximate rate of 17 per cent of the adult male population who engage in commercial sex,” said the NSO.

Cutting the estimated number of clients down to the lower estimates mentioned in newspaper reports still resulted in 10 per cent of the adult male population buying sex.

“These ratios were considered a bit high by international standards,” notes the NSO.

Since no actual data is available on the number of clients serviced by escorts, the agency decided to further lower the number of clients to a third of the number serviced in parlours.

“This resulted in an approximate rate of seven per cent of the adult male population who engage in commercial sex.”

Although the figure remains well above the approximate rate of three per cent determined by international research, the NSO “decided to accept the results given the trends observed on the supply side.”

In other words, the estimated number of male clients may be high, but all those sex workers aren’t here for nothing.

*Although ‘sex work’ is generally understood to include a broader spectrum of services, including pornography such as that provided on online services like OnlyFans, all instances of the term in this article refer solely to prostitution.