Malta’s unemployment rate steady at 2.8%

The unemployment for May 2023 stood steady at 2.8 per cent, declining by 0.3 percentage points year-on-year.

Data provided by the National Statistics Office shows that the country maintained its lowest rate of unemployment on record.

Following revisions to the NSO’s data, the unemployment rate for April was bumped up by 0.1 percentage points to 2.9 per cent.

While often considered a positive indicator, a low level of unemployment leads to its own set of challenges. A tight labour market leads to worker shortages since employers would be searching for potential staff in a ever-shrinking pool of workers.

Since employers would be focused on filling in the gaps in operations, it leads to a skills mismatch, since new employees would not necessarily be qualified to fulfil their jobs, leading to underemployment.

Lastly, it contributes to upward wage pressures since employers are led to compete among each other to attract workers. This potentially leads to poaching and reduced competitivity.

In total, there were 8,322 unemployed persons in May 2023, the majority of whom were men between the ages of 25-74.

For May 2023, the unemployment rate for men stood at three per cent, decreasing by 0.1 percentage points when compared with the previous month. Meanwhile, the rate for females stood at 2.5 per cent, a drop of 0.1 percentage points.

The seasonally adjusted number of unemployed individuals aged between 25 and 74 years stood at 6,173, whereas the number of unemployed youths amounted to 2,150.

For youths, the unemployment rate was 8.3 per cent, while for individuals aged between 25-74 it stood at 2.2 per cent.