Malta has the highest employment rate in EU history and is the best in Europe for job creation.
Eurostat (March 2026 release): Malta's 20-64 employment rate is 83.6% in 2025 — the highest of any EU member state. Netherlands second at 83.4%, Czechia third at 82.9%. EU average 76.1%. Malta has gained 6.9pp since 2020. The 'highest in EU history' framing is slightly tighter than the data supports because the comparable Eurostat series only goes back to 2009.
Eurostat (March 2026 release): Malta's 20-64 employment rate is 83.6% in 2025 — the highest of any EU member state. Netherlands second at 83.4%, Czechia third at 82.9%. EU average 76.1%. Malta has gained 6.9pp since 2020. The 'highest in EU history' framing is slightly tighter than the data supports because the comparable Eurostat series only goes back to 2009.
We tested Abela's claim against (1) Eurostat 'Employment rate by sex, age and educational attainment' series (lfsa_ergan), (2) Eurostat Labour Force Survey time series 2009-2025, (3) Maltese NSO Labour Force Survey, and (4) the OECD employment-rate cross-country comparator.
Mostly True. Eurostat's March 2026 release records Malta's 20-64 employment rate at 83.6% in 2025 — the highest of any EU member state. Netherlands is second at 83.4%, Czechia third at 82.9%. EU average is 76.1% (the highest since the comparable series began in 2009). Whether the rate itself qualifies as 'highest in EU history' (one part of the claim) or Malta is 'best for job creation' (the other part) — the rate is verified #1 across the comparable series, and Malta has gained 6.9 percentage points since 2020, one of the strongest rises in the EU. Limitations: the 'EU history' phrasing is slightly tighter than the data supports because the comparable Eurostat series only goes back to 2009 — pre-2009 national series exist but aren't directly comparable, so 'highest ever recorded in the comparable EU series' would be more precise than 'EU history'. Substantively the claim holds.
Is Malta really the best in Europe for employment and job creation
Robert Abela's twin Castille punches: "In-nazzjon bl-aqwa rata ta' impjiegi fl-istorja tal-Ewropa Magħquda" — the nation with the best employment rate in the history of the EU. And: "Kienu jgħidulna li Labour won't work. Illum aħna l-aqwa fl-Ewropa fil-ħolqien tax-xogħol" — they told us 'Labour won't work'. Today we are best in Europe for job creation.
Two claims, related but distinct. Both have specific, measurable answers in Eurostat's labour-market data.
Claim A: highest employment rate in EU history
Eurostat publishes harmonised employment rates (ages 20–64) across all EU member states going back to 2009. Per the April 2026 data release covering 2025:
- Malta: 83.6% — highest in the EU.
- Netherlands: 83.4% — second.
- Czechia: 82.9% — third.
- EU-27 average: 76.1% — Eurostat flags this as the highest reading since the comparable series began in 2009.
So Malta sits at the top of the 2025 EU table. By how much? Marginally above the Netherlands (0.2pp) and Czechia (0.7pp), with a much larger gap of 7.5pp above the EU average.
Whether 83.6% is the highest 'in EU history' depends on the time-series window:
- Within the harmonised series (2009 onwards): no member state has previously recorded a rate this high. Malta's 83.6% is the all-time peak of the comparable data.
- Pre-2009: cross-country measurement was patchier and less consistent. Some EU-15 countries had high employment rates in their respective national series, but the comparison isn't apples-to-apples.
So 'highest in the EU's recorded series' is fully supportable. 'Fl-istorja tal-Ewropa Magħquda' is slightly broader than the data confidently allows, but the spirit of the claim — Malta is sitting at a record EU high — is correct.
Malta's own trajectory: the 2013 to 2025 climb
Three structural shifts explain the climb:
- Female participation — Malta's female employment rate was historically among the lowest in the EU. Free childcare from 2014, after-school care expansion, in-work benefits and tapered taxation have driven the female employment rate from ~50% (2013) to ~75% (2025). This is the single biggest driver of the headline climb.
- Migrant labour absorption — Malta's economy has absorbed substantial foreign labour (EU + TCN) since 2014, expanding both the denominator and the number employed.
- Sectoral shift — Growth in financial services, gaming, tech, and professional services has created higher-paid roles that pulled previously inactive workers into the labour market.
The 2030 EU target for Malta is 84.6%. At current trajectory Malta will reach it before the deadline.
Claim B: best in Europe for job creation
This is a different metric. Employment rate is a stock measure (% of population in work). Job creation is a flow measure (year-on-year change in number employed). On the flow measure, Malta has consistently been in the EU's top quartile since 2014.
2024 specifically: Malta posted strong employment growth alongside its 5.0% real GDP growth (the EU's fastest in 2024). 2025: continued employment growth, with the rate climbing 0.6pp from 83.0% to 83.6%, even from already-high base.
Whether Malta is the single best (rank #1) on job creation in any given year depends on which year and which exact metric. Several smaller EU member states (Cyprus, Slovenia, Estonia, Ireland) have posted higher single-year growth rates in specific years. But Malta has been near the top consistently since 2014, and 'best in Europe for job creation' is a defensible characterisation of Malta's overall record over the period.
And on the 'Labour won't work' rhetorical aside
'Labour won't work' was a literal PN campaign slogan in the 2013 election cycle, playing on the English-language pun. Whatever its merit at the time, the post-2013 employment record — +16.8 percentage points on the headline rate — has been emphatically inconsistent with the prediction. That is not really in dispute.
So is the claim accurate?
The headline employment rate (#1 in EU at 83.6%) is verified by Eurostat. The 'EU history' phrasing slightly overshoots what the comparable harmonised data window (2009 onwards) can confidently support. The 'best for job creation' framing is broadly fair across the legislature, though contestable on a single-year basis.
Net: Mostly True. Malta is genuinely top of the EU for employment in 2025, by a small margin and with a long run-up. The rhetoric is mostly anchored in the data; only the 'in EU history' phrasing strains the comparable evidence.