One in four people residing in Malta in 2021 were born abroad

In 2021, one in every four persons residing in Malta (25.7%) was born in another country, according to Labour Force Survey (LFS) module carried out during 2021 and partly financed through EU grants.

The LFS is a household-based survey and is used as a monitoring tool across the European Union for assessing progress made in various spheres of labour market and social statistics.

The survey shows that the share of females in Malta in 2021 who were born abroad stood at 51.0%, slightly higher than the share of males (49.0%).

The majority of migrants in Malta were aged between 25 and 54 years (78.1%). A further 7.2% were aged between 15 and 24 years, while 14.7% were in the 55 to 74 age cohort.

This is slightly different when compared to the persons born in Malta, where 51.9% were between 25 and 54 years, 14.2 were in the 15 to 24 age cohort while, the remaining 33.8% were between 55 and 74 years.

Over the past 10 years, the share of persons aged 15 to 74 years living in private households in Malta and who were born abroad increased significantly.

A difference of 20.1 percentage points was recorded from 2012 (5.6%) to 2021 (25.7%).

The largest increase was recorded in 2019 where the share of persons born abroad increased by 3.3 percentage points.

LFS results indicated that in 2021, the duration of stay for persons born abroad was on average 11 years.

The duration of stay was classified in two categories; recent migrants (residents for less than eight years) and settled migrants (resident for eight years or more).

Slightly more than 50% of persons born abroad were recent migrants, while 49.3% were settled migrants.

The duration of stay varied according to one’s level of education. The larger share of persons born abroad with a secondary level of education or less were settled migrants (57.7%).

Meanwhile, 50.3 % and 57.5 % of persons with a post-secondary and with a tertiary level of education were recent migrants.

Results showed that the majority of migrants in Malta were born outside the EU as opposed to 36.2% of migrants who were born in the EU.

Almost 15% of migrants were born in Italy, followed by the United Kingdom (14.6%) and the Philippines (10.5%). A further 21.3% were born in another EU country while 38.7% were born in another country outside the EU.

This implied that the majority of immigration in Malta occurs from outside the EU (63.8%) as opposed to 36.2% of intra-EU migration.