I absolutely cannot stand the way newspapers launch facts into the public sphere without explaining them for their readers. This is sheer, unutterable laziness: reporting the bare facts and figures without elucidation. It wouldn’t happen if the people who work in newsrooms were to change their attitude from the existing one of ‘reporting a press release’ to ‘reporting on a press release’.

Take the report on employment rates across the European Union, which I read on timesofmalta.com yesterday afternoon, culled from Eurostat figures. The heading and the first sentence were creative: “EU employment figures make sad reading for Malta. Employment rate figures published today by the EU make sorry reading for Malta.” The report then fails to explain exactly why the figures make sad reading, and leave readers at liberty to imagine catastrophic scenarios of unemployment rates of 45.1 per cent, inferred from Malta’s employment rate of 54.9 per cent, which is the lowest in the European Union.

The news story did not define the employment rate or the unemployment rate, or explain why both of those rates are so low in Malta (our unemployment rate is 6.5 per cent, the fourth lowest in the EU and a far cry from the imagined 45.1 per cent). Statistics released by Eurostat are intended for professional use and not for general newspaper readership. Newspapers are there to interpret those statistics for their readers and not to report them pat and without back-up information. They have to give the numbers some context, even if it means a couple of hours of research. When that doesn’t happen, the newspaper merely ends up spreading misinformation, which is the reverse of what it is supposed to do, unless it is owned by the Labour Party or the General Workers Union, in which case spreading misinformation becomes its raison d’etre.

When I read that timesofmalta.com report, I groaned. And sure enough, there beneath the report was a flurry of shrieking comments to the effect that gONezI is a liar, that the government is a bunch of deceitful ferrets in a syphilitic sack, and that the end of the world is nigh and we’re all going to hell in a handcart. A few people popped in and tried to calm the situation by pointing out that the statistics say nothing that we didn’t know already: that Maltese women drop out when they have their first child, and often even before they have a child but as soon as they marry, and that Maltese men do their best to find ways to stop working when they reach their late 50s. But the hysterics were having none of this.

If there is any ‘sad reading for Malta’ in these numbers, it is the fact that just over half of people of working age support the other half, either directly or indirectly, besides supporting the entire child population and the population of pensioners. Small wonder, then, that the backs of those 54.9 per cent are cracking. That is not how the majority of those commenting on the internet read the situation, though. To them, the ‘sad reading for Malta’ lay in the ‘fact’ they had inferred: that our unemployment rate is 45.1 per cent and that gOnEzi is a liar for claiming otherwise.

The employment rate is the number of persons who are economically active, expressed as a percentage of the total workforce. The workforce is defined as the number of persons of working age, whether they are self-employed, employed, registered as unemployed or economically inactive by choice because they have private incomes, live off social security or are maintained by others. The mistake occurs when people think that the unemployment rate is calculated in the same way that the employment rate is: that it is the number of people who are not economically active, expressed as a percentage of the total workforce.

That is where the confusion lies. The unemployment rate is something else: it is the number of registered job-seekers expressed as a percentage of the workforce. In Malta’s case, this is 6.5 per cent, the fourth lowest in Europe and a far cry from the laughable 45.1 per cent that so many people inferred from the 54.9 per cent employment rate. It is only registered job-seekers who are calculated, and not everyone who doesn’t have a job. You are unemployed only if you are looking for work. You are not unemployed if you are a housewife, a rich man’s moll, or the heir to a fortune that allows you to live off income from investments.

Yes, it is rather disturbing that only roughly half the Maltese workforce is economically active, and that is precisely what the point of the news report should have been. People looking for work and not finding it is one thing. People not even bothering to look for work because they can and do live off others is another thing altogether. Malta does not have an unemployment problem. What it has is something else altogether: a drop-out mentality and a general attitude of apathy.

I do not agree with those who say that the decision not to work is a personal one and that it is nobody else’s business if women decide to stay at home and live off their husband or lover. These sorts of decisions are personal only for those who drop out altogether and go off and live in some kind of commune far from the rest of humanity. When a woman decides not to work it is not between her and her husband, but between her and the rest of society who must be taxed harder because she isn’t taxed at all. If the state needs X amount of money to keep things ticking over, then it stands to reason that the fewer the number of those who work, the greater the amount of taxes they must pay on an individual basis.

When more and more people become economically active, the tax burden is shared and we pay fewer taxes individually. The fact that Mary and Doris are sitting at home is our business and not just theirs; those who work have to pay more tax because Mary and Doris are not paying any. Our unfortunate mentality, which attaches the civil duty of tax to work rather than to responsible citizenship and social responsibility, is one of the reasons for the huge army of women who don’t contribute economically. The employment rate for Maltese women is a shockingly low 37.7 per cent. Because the rest are not pulling their weight financially, the state has to turn its snapping tax-jaws to the rest.

And that is precisely why the numbers make such sad reading for Malta: because the vast majority of women have yet to understand that by refusing to work they are not just a private financial burden on their husband but collectively, a public financial burden on the entire country.

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