Families are facing greater cost-of-living pressures.
Tested against the metric that ultimately matters for cost-of-living pressure — real wages — Borg's claim does not hold up. Maltese nominal wages grew approximately +43% from 2013 to 2023, and cumulative HICP inflation over the same window was approximately 22-25%. That gives real-wage growth of roughly +18-20% across the decade — households are meaningfully better off, not worse. The 2025 wage growth (forecast 5.9% per employee) also outpaces 2025 inflation (2.4% in December 2025). Pockets of real pressure exist — housing affordability at a 10-12× price-to-income ratio, the 2022-2024 inflation spike eroding real wages for two consecutive years before the recovery, low-income households exposed disproportionately to food/energy inflation — but on the metric that finally matters, the headline 'greater pressure' framing is contradicted by a decade of real-wage data.
Tested against the metric that ultimately matters for cost-of-living pressure — real wages — Borg's claim does not hold up. Maltese nominal wages grew approximately +43% from 2013 to 2023, and cumulative HICP inflation over the same window was approximately 22-25%. That gives real-wage growth of roughly +18-20% across the decade — households are meaningfully better off, not worse. The 2025 wage growth (forecast 5.9% per employee) also outpaces 2025 inflation (2.4% in December 2025). Pockets of real pressure exist — housing affordability at a 10-12× price-to-income ratio, the 2022-2024 inflation spike eroding real wages for two consecutive years before the recovery, low-income households exposed disproportionately to food/energy inflation — but on the metric that finally matters, the headline 'greater pressure' framing is contradicted by a decade of real-wage data.
We tested Borg's claim against the metric that finally matters for cost-of-living pressure: real wages, i.e. nominal wage growth net of inflation. NSO Maltese average gross monthly pay series shows wages rose from €1,300 (2013) to ~€1,800 (2023) and continued to ~€2,146/month by Q4 2025 — approximately +43% nominal across the 2013-2023 window. Cumulative Eurostat HICP inflation over the same window is approximately 22-25%. The real-wage gain across the decade is therefore approximately +18-20%. The 2025 picture is similar: 5.9% per-employee wage growth forecast against 2.4% headline inflation in December 2025. Add Malta's HDI hitting an all-time high of 0.924 in 2023 and EU-SILC 2024 indicators showing AROPE marginally down and life satisfaction up.
Verdict lands at Misleading because the headline test that matters — real wages over a decade — runs against Borg's framing, but pocket pressures are real enough that 'False' would overstate the contrast. The 2022-2024 inflation spike (peak above 7% in late 2022) eroded real wages for two consecutive years before the recovery resumed. Housing costs ran far ahead of headline HICP and bite disproportionately for new buyers and renters (the 10-12× price-to-income ratio in companion #71). Low-income households spend a higher share of income on the categories that inflated most. The aggregate is rising; pockets are pressured. On the metric that finally matters, the claim does not hold. The deep-dive lays out the real-wage decomposition and the pocket-pressure context; this editorial note is methodology only.
Are Maltese families really facing greater cost-of-living pressures
The metric that finally matters for cost-of-living pressure is real wages — what households can buy with the income they earn, after inflation. On that test, Maltese households are meaningfully better off across the decade Borg implicitly references. Nominal wages rose approximately +43% between 2013 and 2023; cumulative HICP inflation over the same window was approximately 22-25%; the real-wage gain across the decade is therefore approximately +18-20%. The 2025 picture is consistent: 5.9% per-employee wage growth against 2.4% inflation. Pockets of real pressure exist — housing affordability, the 2022-2024 inflation spike, low-income households disproportionately exposed to food/energy inflation — but on the metric that matters, the headline 'greater pressure' framing does not survive.
Method note: real wages is the dispositive test
Cost-of-living pressure is most cleanly measured as the gap between what households earn (nominal wages) and what their typical basket costs (HICP inflation). When wages grow faster than prices, purchasing power rises and pressure eases on the average household. When prices grow faster than wages, purchasing power falls and pressure increases. We test this three ways:
- Cumulative real wage growth across the decade — this is the headline test that finally settles the question of whether the aggregate household is better or worse off.
- Year-by-year wage vs HICP comparison — this surfaces the 2022-2024 squeeze that genuinely eroded purchasing power for two consecutive years before the recovery resumed.
- HICP component and distributional analysis — this shows which prices rose disproportionately and which household profiles bore the pressure.
The first test is decisive. The second and third add context on the pockets of pressure that exist within an aggregate that is otherwise rising.
Annual nominal wage growth vs HICP inflation, 2013–2025
This is the chart that anchors the analysis. Both series on the same percentage axis, year by year.
The pattern is striking. Wage growth ran above inflation in every year from 2013 through 2021 (a steady real-wage gain of 1.5–3 percentage points annually). The 2022 inflation spike to 6.1% — driven by post-COVID supply-chain disruption and the Russia-Ukraine energy shock — overshot wage growth in 2022 (3.9%) and again in 2023 (4.0% vs 5.6% inflation). From 2024 onwards the pattern reverted: 5.0% wage growth vs 2.4% inflation; in 2025 the gap widened further to 5.9% vs 2.4%.
So in 11 of 13 years wages outpaced inflation. In 2 years (2022 and 2023) inflation outpaced wages.
Cumulative real wage index, 2013–2025
The annual chart above shows the year-by-year flows. The cumulative chart below shows the stock — total purchasing power, indexed so 2013 = 100.
Real purchasing power across the decade: +20% by 2025. The peak before the 2022 inflation spike was 117.3 in 2021; the trough during the squeeze was 113.1 in 2023; recovery to 120.0 by 2025. The 2022–23 squeeze was real, eroded ~4 index points temporarily, but did not undo the prior decade's gains.
What drove the 2022–2024 squeeze: HICP component analysis
The headline HICP figure conceals what households experience. Inflation isn't uniform across the consumption basket; some categories ran far above the average, others below. The 2022–2023 spike was concentrated in three components.
Two findings worth highlighting. First: food prices rose roughly twice as fast as headline HICP. For low-income households — who spend 20–25% of their budget on food versus the 12–15% of higher-income households — this means their effective inflation rate was several percentage points higher than the published headline. Second: housing and energy were anomalously calm (~2% cumulative) because of Malta's energy-subsidy programme. Households have been protected from the wholesale-energy spike that drove 30–80% household-bill increases across the rest of the EU. That's the part of Malta's experience that's most unlike Italy, Spain, Germany or France over the same period.
Where the genuine pressure does sit: housing
Headline HICP captures rent inflation imperfectly (it weights existing rents, which are sticky) and doesn't capture house purchase prices at all. NSO's Residential Property Price Index (RPPI) tells a different story.
House prices roughly doubled 2013–2024; wages grew ~45%. The price-to-income ratio has therefore widened materially — buying a typical Maltese property in 2024 takes roughly 50% more years of average income than it did in 2013. For first-time buyers and renters entering the market today, this is the most concrete cost-of-living pressure they face. It doesn't show up in headline HICP because HICP's housing component is dominated by existing-tenancy costs, which are sticky.
Housing-cost overburden — the share of households where housing costs exceed 40% of disposable income — is at 17.6% in rural Malta (one of the highest in the EU) and 5.5% in urban areas. The rural-urban gap is itself unusual.
How does Malta compare to the EU?
Malta's headline HICP across the decade is below the EU-27 average and well below the high-inflation eastern European member states. The energy-subsidy programme is the main reason — every other EU country saw electricity and gas household prices rise 30–100% across 2022–2023; Maltese households didn't. So the 'we have lower headline inflation than peers' framing PL has used is supported by Eurostat data.
What the aggregate average misses
The aggregate average masks meaningful sub-population pressure. Three groups whose experience is materially worse than the headline average:
- First-time buyers and recent renters — face the doubled house-price reality, not the protected existing-tenancy reality. Their effective housing-cost inflation is multiples of headline HICP.
- Low-income households — spend a larger share on food and basic groceries, which inflated ~24% over 2021–2024 versus the 12% headline. Effective inflation rate for the bottom income decile was several percentage points higher than the published HICP.
- Pensioners on COLA-only pensions in earlier years — pre-2024 above-COLA discretionary increases were modest; pensioners saw real-terms purchasing power roughly flat through the inflation spike, with above-inflation gains only emerging from 2024 onwards through the Social Partners' Agreement.
For these groups, Borg's 'greater pressure' framing has substantive content even if the aggregate average is rising.
So is the claim accurate?
The literal headline test fails: cumulative real wages rose ~20% across 2013–2025 and 2025 wage growth (5.9%) is again well ahead of inflation (2.4%). On the aggregate, families are not worse off than a decade ago.
What rescues part of Borg's framing: the 2022–2024 inflation spike eroded real wages for two consecutive years; housing costs have run materially ahead of headline HICP and bite hardest on first-time buyers and renters; low-income households experience higher effective inflation than the published average. For these specific sub-populations and on these specific cost categories, the 'greater pressure' framing reflects something real.
Borg's claim is rhetorical compression of a more nuanced picture. The aggregate is not what he says it is. The distributional reality is closer to it. Verdict: Misleading.