77% of employees with an educational background in ICT in Malta are men

77% employed with an education background in ICT are men, new data published by the European Union’s statistics body Eurostat shows.

The statistic, whilst still showing an industry that more men seem to partake in, is below the general European gender ratio for the industry, which stands at 84% men and 16% women. It also constitutes a sizeable improvement in raising female participation in the sector since 2007, when men made of 87.6% of Malta’s ICT industry.

Among the EU Member States, the country with the highest share of employed persons with an ICT education who were men was Czechia (93%), followed by Hungary and Poland (both 90%). In contrast, there were three EU countries where this share was 75 % or below: Bulgaria (66%), Ireland (73%) and Romania (75%).

While there was an overall increase between 2007 and 2017 in the size of the EU labour force with an ICT education, there were varied developments across the EU Member States.

In 2017, the share of the labour force with an ICT education who were in employment — as opposed to being unemployed — was 97% or higher in Hungary, Estonia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic (where a peak of 100% was registered).

By contrast, a relatively high share of persons with an ICT education were unemployed in 2017 in Finland (12.6%) — as well as four southern Member States — Italy (14.3%), Spain (14.6 %), Portugal (15.6%) and most notably Greece (which had the highest rate, at 26.4%). Malta however bucks this trend with a 95% employment rate for those receiving an education in ICT. Only Hungary, Estonia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic – as mentioned above – and Slovenia registered higher rates of employment.

In 2017, almost three quarters (72.7%) of employed persons in the EU with an ICT education had a tertiary level of educational attainment; constituting a 5.6% increase than a decade before, when the corresponding share was 67.1%.

There are however wide statistical differences between specific countries. 97% of employed people with an ICT education in France had completed education up to a tertiary level, whilst Cyprus also registered a similarly high number, at 95%.

Conversely, only 24.5% employed people with an ICT education in Portugal had completed their education up to a tertiary level, by far the lowest across the Union – Italy is second last with a 37.3% rate.

Malta fairs quite low in this respect; 59.4% of those employed with an ICT education possess tertiary education. This is quite a decrease from the same rate a decade ago, which stood at 71.1%.

The demographic composition of those with employed with an ICT education in Malta also points towards a youthful industry; 87.1% of the workforce is made up of people between 15 and 34 years of age.