George M. Mangion

The full-time gainfully occupied population reached 173,474 at the end of December 2015, which shows a healthy increase over the previous decade, but no statistics are readily available to quantify the number of Millennials in this total.

PKF deemed it interesting to assess the rate of participation of women in the labour force since this has a direct relationship to the composition of Millennials. Two years ago it conducted a survey in conjunction with GRTU and Malta Chamber of Commerce, to ascertain the social characteristics of female entrepreneurs and difficulties they have to access credit and expand their business.

A questionnaire distributed locally focused on getting opinions on how barriers to growth among business owners, as well as some obstacles they might have encountered while building the business. Furthermore, a section of this particular questionnaire focused on incentives to encourage more women to become business owners. This part of the study was conducted with the help of GRTU, who distributed the questionnaires to their female members.

In 2013, the European Commission criticized the government that the number of women actively in work remains low at 46.9 per cent (it has now reached 52 per cent). The European Commission recommended that Malta continued to take measures to facilitate the integration of women in the labour market. This will support the government’s endeavour to reach the 2020 target of 62.9 per cent employment rate – a difficult goal to reach. One cannot over emphasize the importance of higher female participation in the workforce. It is a continuously discussed topic in Malta as it is the government’s target to continue increasing this activity rate. Furthermore, other recommendations are still currently in discussion in the 2017 budget proposals which may help increase the female activity rate.