Number of foreign workers in Malta rises to over 34,000

There were 34,157 foreign people registered as working in Malta as of September 2016, data tabled in Parliament has revealed.

The data shows that 25,115 of these workers hail from EU or EEA counties, while 9,042 are third country nationals. 20,380 of them are men, while 13,776 of them are women.

The highest number of these came from Italy (5,724 people), the United Kingdom (4,218 people), Bulgaria (2,187 people), the Phillipines (1,625 people), Hungary (1,454 people), Romania (1,407 people), Serbia (1,380 people).

There also 283 registered immigrants from China, 107 from the United States, 443 from India, and only 326 from Libya.

There is also one from Saudi Arabia, one from the United Arab Emirates, one from Mongolia, two from Uganda, and three from North Korea.

This represents a signficiant spike in the number of foreign workers in Malta in recent workers – only 21,000 were registered as such back in March 2014.

The statistics were tabled by education minister Evarist Bartolo in response to a parliamentary question by Opposition MP Carm Mifsud Bonnici.