The fact that Malta is extremely successful in the area of youth employment does not mean we can afford to sit on our laurels. As the EU ranks us fifth lowest out of the 27 member states in terms of youth unemployment, we have to continue striving hard to devise ways of enhancing the employability of our young people. The employability and education and training of young people to this end are amongst our foremost priorities. The National Youth Employment Strategy 2015, which targets young people aged 15 to 24, is aimed at doing to do just that. It is relevant to point out that in 2010 the average EU population in the 15 to 24 age group was 12.1 per cent, whereas in Malta there were 57,931 in this age group – or 14 per cent of the population.
Education, training and the aquisition of necessary skills
The aim of the strategy is to develop a society that empowers and supports its young citizens in the realisation of their life projects, underpinned by the principles of solidarity and inclusion. A guiding principle in this strategy is that all young people should have equal access and opportunity at all stages of their life to education, training and employment.
The strategy’s main priorities are focused on supporting school completion, encouraging educational attainment and formal validation, facilitating the successful reintegration into education, training and employment of young people who are disengaged or at risk of being disengaged, providing the learning tools that ascertain that young people are equipped with the necessary employability skills and ensuring the sustainability of young people's entry into the labour market by addressing temporary precarious and informal work arrangement. These priorities are also conveyed in the EU 2020 Strategy, the National Reform Programme, Vision 2015 and Beyond, and a number of EU Council conclusions and resolutions and national policies.
The targets are to reduce absenteeism in compulsory education; to increase the participation rate of young people in further and higher education and in life-long learning; to reduce the number of early school-leavers; to increase participation in informal activities; to increase education attainment at different levels of education systems; to reduce the rate of unemployment among young people; to reduce the NEET (not in employment, education or training) rate; to increase the number of apprenticeships and traineeships and to reduce the incidence of precarious and informal work.
The effectiveness of the strategy depends on collaboration between the stakeholders – which include the Employment and Training Commission (ETC), the Directorate for Educational Services, Agenzija Zghazagh, the public and private higher education institutions, Malta Enterprise – and, of course, the young people themselves.
Positive results for Malta
Malta is one of only five countries – the others being Austria, Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg – that registered an increase in total employment figures over the figure in 2008 and Malta and Germany are the only two countries that reduced unemployment figures compared to 2008. While the EU27 showed a decline in the employment rate, Malta showed an increase. These successful results in employment did not just happen. They are the fruits of capable economic leadership and an economy that has grown more than the EU average and that is expected to continue growing even when that of the EU is shrinking.
If the economy does not fare as expected, it will not only be jobs that suffer, but also such things as our free health and education services. This year we invested a record sum in education when other countries had to reduce their education budget. We could do this only because we have managed economic growth. Eurostat figures show that education attainment is a key determinant to employability and the participation increase in higher education in Malta, from 43 per cent in 1999 to 83 per cent in 2011, is not only successful in itself but also a measure of the provision of opportunities being given to our young people to obtain better jobs.
Opportunities versus opportunistic guarantees
In the last four years our young people have been given countless opportunities, ranging from 800 university courses, €23 million in stipends per year, 2,000 scholarships and thousands of courses through the Life Learning Directorate and the ETC, to the setting up of the national school of sports and the building of a new school every year. In the face of this success and these opportunities, Labour is presenting a “guarantee for youths”, which is simply a recycled idea of the European Socialists. But, as is the case with the water and electricity bills, we do not know how this promise from the Labour’s wish list is going to work out. But we do know for certain that they have cut stipends in the past and Labour’s exponents seem to still be toying with the idea. And we know that they are also toying with the idea of proposing a lower minimum wage to young people. The problem would, of course, be the part that we will never know – at least not before an election.