Maltese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are more likely to hire skilled workers from outside the EU to cover staff shortages, according to a recent EU study. The study found that in the past two years, almost one-third of Maltese SMEs have attempted to employ workers from third countries to address the skills gap, which is twice the EU average. Other countries that also hired from outside the union included the Netherlands (25%) and Poland (22%).
The report revealed that Maltese SMEs faced significant challenges when it came to finding and hiring staff with the right skills, with almost half of those surveyed finding it “very difficult” to find the right staff over the last year, ranking third after Greece (57%) and Bulgaria (50%). The EU-wide problem was particularly prevalent in the tourism industry.
Despite the difficult conditions, 37% of Maltese SMEs tried hiring foreign talent from other EU countries, compared to the 32% that sought candidates from outside the EU. However, over a third of Maltese SMEs reported challenges in finding suitable candidates from other EU countries, well above the EU average.
Skills shortages have become a growing concern in the EU, with the issue ranked as the top problem for SMEs across Europe, particularly larger companies. Bonifacio Garcia Porras, the European Commission’s Director General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, stated that the Commission is planning on unveiling new measures to help SMEs tackle the problem.
In the study, just over one in ten businesses in Malta rated the external support they received to tackle the skills shortage as “very effective,” with 60% saying it was “somewhat effective” and 26% ranking this help as not effective. Half of businesses said that upskilling such as training funded by an external entity would be useful for tackling the problem, while 43% said fiscal incentives such as tax deductions or a tax moratorium would help.
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