Helena Grech

A study conducted by Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, showed this week that Malta is among the EU countries which have the least discrepancy of activity rates between Maltese citizens and foreigners. Malta is the country that comes nearer to balancing activity rates of Maltese and of foreigners

The activity rate represents economically active persons (employed and unemployed) between the ages of 20 and 64. Both employed and unemployed are included as this constitutes the manpower supply of a nation's labour market, regardless of their current job status.

In the case of Malta, activity rates of citizens on the island are 71.3%, while foreign citizens have an activity rate of 69.8%. Of the foreign citizens, citizens hailing from other EU countries registered an activity rate of 70.8%, while non EU citizens registered at 69%.

Overall, Eurostat found that activity rates for non-EU citizens was lower in 2015 than for nationals, however in the case of Malta, the difference stood at just -2.3% (71.3% activity rate for nationals and 69% for non EU citizens).

The country with the highest discrepancy between country reporting nationals and non-EU citizens was the Netherlands, with nationals registering and activity rate of 82.2% and non-EU citizens at 59.7%.

There were a total of nine EU member state countries who registered higher activity rates for non-EU citizens than country reporting nationals. These are Greece, Slovenia, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, Cyprus, Portugal, Czech Republic and Hungary. Of these, Greece registered the highest discrepancy, with non-EU citizens registering an activity rate of 80.7% and Greek nationals at 72.6%.

Looking in detail at their respective situation on the labour market, the employment rate for non-EU citizens aged 20 to 64 in the EU stood at 56.7% in 2015, while it was 70.6% for nationals. The share of employees with a temporary contract was higher for non-EU citizens (21.4%) than for nationals (12.9%). The pattern was the same for the proportion of part time employment, which was more widespread amongst non-EU citizens (28.3%) than amongst nationals (18.4%).