Malta last year continued to witness the European Union’s lowest employment rates, according to figures published by Eurostat, the EU’s statistical arm, yesterday.

But while employment among Maltese men has actually surpassed both European Union and eurozone averages, it is the employment, or lack thereof, of Maltese women and persons aged between 55 and 64 years that appear to be keeping Malta at the bottom of the EU table.

With an overall employment rate of 55.7 per cent last year, Malta had the EU’s lowest employment rate last year according to Eurostat, which assesses the employment status of people between 15 and 64 years of age.

Malta’s rate stood a whole 10 percentage points below the eurozone’s average employment rate of 65.7 per cent, and 9.3 per cent behind the EU’s total average.

But while employment levels for Maltese men, at 74.2 per cent, were actually above the EU average of 72.5 per cent, it was the country’s female employment rate that has dragged Malta’s numbers down to the bottom of the league.

Only 36.9 per cent of Maltese women were employed last year according to Eurostat, while the next in line was Greece, which saw 47.9 per cent of its women in employment.

Malta is also bottom of the table when it comes to employment rates for older persons between 55 and 64 years of age, with 28.3 per cent of such workers staying on in the labour market, compared with the EU average of 44.7 per cent.

Within the age group, Maltese men did not perform too poorly with an employment rate of 46.2 per cent, compared with the EU average of 53.9 per cent. The female employment rate for the age bracket of 11.8 per cent, however, was the EU’s lowest and falls below the EU’s 36 per cent average.

Malta’s part-time employment rate, meanwhile, stood at 11.1 per cent, below the EU 18.2 per cent average and the 19.6 per cent eurozone average.

The EU’s Lisbon targets provide that member states reach an overall 70 per cent across the board employment rate by 2010, while the female employment rate is envisaged to rise to 60 per cent.

There are, however, discrepancies with Eurostat’s Labour Force Survey. Since it attempts to detail the entire potential workforce, it includes all individuals between the ages of 15 and 65. As such, if a country’s rate of early school leavers decreases, in line with another of the Lisbon Agenda’s criteria, its employment rate correspondingly drops. The same can be said when a country sees a better take up of post secondary students, another Lisbon target.

Across the EU, Denmark had the highest employment rate last year at 77.1 per cent, followed by The Netherlands, Sweden, Austria and the UK.

Malta’s 55.7 per cent was the EU’s lowest and was followed by Poland at 57 per cent, Hungary, Italy and Romania.