Evolution of employment study

To mark its 10th year as a systemic player in the recruitment economy, Keepmeposted has produced its first comprehensive report on employment in Malta. This detailed and exhaustive analysis explores the evolution of employment in Malta over the past ten years, the changes and how it is likely to develop going forward. The global pandemic, undoubtedly responsible for the single biggest shift in working practices in recent times, was another reason that propelled Malta’s leading recruitment brand to commission such a report.

The study sheds light on areas surrounding employment over the past decade, with some key findings confirming that the rise of female employment rates was the factor that mostly fuelled the overall growth in employment rates, as a result of two main factors. Firstly, economic growth created many more job opportunities, and secondly, the country’s economic growth was accompanied by several fiscal incentives that enabled women to join the working world.

The Covid-19 pandemic, and its impact both globally and locally, led the team to carry out a deep dive into the specific changes it has brought about: those work practices that have worked and are likely to stay and those which will be ditched as soon as the pandemic is fully behind us. The data from the study highlights that the future of employment lies in combining both office and remote working.

Artificial Intelligence is expected to have an increasingly big impact on the type and size of businesses’ workforce, with repetitive jobs continuing to be taken over by machines over the next five to ten years. While some jobs, due to their very nature will never disappear, others will be gone by 2030. Manufacturing and production are also moving at a fast pace towards full automation.

As for the future of jobs, the data showed that local responses mirrored those reported in the World Economic Forum’s, ‘The Future of the Job’ report, published in October 2020. The general agreement is that AI and digitalisation will change the world of work with the pandemic accelerating this process. The data confirmed that there will be an increase in new jobs with the vast majority in technology and digitalisation, and the exciting prospect that greater use of technology will result in new service opportunities at better efficiencies and lower costs. Most of the respondents in the Keepmeposted survey also believed that greater use of technology would create new requirements in areas such as technical support, risk management, cybersecurity, data science, software development as well as AI, robotics, and the Internet of Things. In tandem to this, the data further highlights a need for a national strategy to reskill the workforce.

The full report which includes several key insights into the local economic landscape may be downloaded here: https://www.keepmeposted.com.mt/employment-report/

The research and analysis were done by EMCS Ltd.