During the last three years, European families have been facing financial hardship due to the global economic crisis that put countries into recession and hindered the growth needed to sustain the desired quality of life. Nonetheless, the EU has been sufficiently forward-looking and ambitious to immediately discuss ways towards an employment-friendly recovery and the attainment of a full employment objective.

The fact that 23 million Europeans are out of a job makes this a huge challenge, though an essential one. EU countries, including Malta, will need to attract investment that promotes job creation coupled with effective labour market policies. We also have to incentivise a changing workforce composition, while making work pay.

Globalisation will make this endeavour even more challenging as the more advanced an EU country is, the less it will able to compete on production costs and will thus have to produce innovative and higher quality services and products if it is to survive. In return, this will necessitate a highly skilled workforce.

In 2010, a group of experts presented the EU Commision with a report entitled New Skills for New Jobs: Action Now that highlighted the fact that unemployment rates in the EU systematically vary with qualification levels. The study alerts us to the fact that while the employment rate among the highly skilled stands at 85 per cent, that for the low skilled stands at only 50 per cent. This is of further concern because around 77 million people in Europe aged between 25 and 64 have few if any qualifications.

However, ensuring a better trained and thus better skilled workforce is to tackle only one side of the coin, as we also have to ensure that workers are not only skilled but are also in possesion of the right skills. As Commisioners Spidla and Figel noted way back in 2008, the fact that there are unfilled job vacancies at a time when unemployment is rising, highlights the need to strive for a better matching of worker skills and available jobs. Indeed, we have to think in the long term and anticipate the skills that the economy will need for the coming decade.

While the European construction industry could loose some three million workers, studies point out that by 2015 there will be an estimated shortfall of seven hundred ICT specialists and another one million in the health sector around Europe. Of course, this will create a lot of opportunities for individuals with the right skills, but smaller economies like ours might feel the pinch not only from a shortage due to under production of the right skills but potentially through local skilled workers finding better opportunities abroad.

To this end we first need to put in place better mechanisms to anticipate the skills that will be in demand in the coming years. Secondly, we have to invest in the upgrading of skills. Finally, we have to persuade people of the tremendous value of possessing skills and of continuosly upgrading them. This is the only way to maintain worker employability – we cannot have our cake and eat it.

Malta’s present administration remains comitted to creating more and better jobs, and in the circumstances it is faring pretty well. However, we cannot rest on our laurels. We need to further invest in the abilities of our young generation by targeting more our early school leavers while promoting life-long learning and longer participation in employment. Following the same logic, we have to faciltate greater female participation in the labour market. With around 60 per cent of the University population being female, we would be missing out on a precious resource, were they to stay out of employment, and Malta’s success remains highly dependant upon its investment and good use of human capital.