Average basic salaries in Malta at €1,555 in Q4 2020

The average basic salary of Malta’s employees in the fourth quarter of 2020 has been estimated by the National Statistics Office (NSO) to be €1,555, down from €1,619 in the same period of 2019. 

According to a Labour Force Survey released on Thursday, average monthly salaries varied from €1,041 among employees in elementary occupations to €2,264 among managers.

The study indicates that Malta’s labour market remained stable during the quarter, with the number of people in employment standing at 260,109, a slight increase over the 259,731 reported in Q3. 

Self-employed people accounted for 16 per cent of those with main jobs, reflecting that the vast majority (83.9 per cent) of the labour force were employees. 13.6 per cent of those in employment held part-time jobs.

More males than females were recorded to be in the work force, with 154,772 (68.4 per cent) males in employment, in comparison with 105,337 (50 per cent) females. 

However, statistics indicate this phenomenon is weaker in the younger generation, with only a 0.2 per cent different between the proportion of males and females in employment in the generation aged 15 to 24.

With regards to the number of hours worked, on average people worked 34.6 “actual hours” weekly, with that number climbing to 36.6 hours when excluding part-time workers.

This reflects a notable decline in the number of hours worked during the same period in 2019, with full-time employees working an average of 39.9 “actual hours” per week. 

The sector most commonly worked in was “public administration, defence, education, human health, and other social work activities”, which employed more than a quarter of Malta’s work force during the period, a disproportionately high proportion of which being female (more than 40,000 females versus 25,794 males). 

The least common areas of employment were agriculture, forestry and fishing as well as real estate, which both employed one per cent of the labour force. 

The average basic pay in some sectors decreased rather sharply in Q4 2020 when compared with Q4 2019, with managers being paid an average of nearly €500 less, and craft and related trades workers making an average of €90 less per month.