At 11:52 this morning Joseph Muscat tweeted (as we do nowadays) that employment was up by 3.6% in March. I had been waiting for some new NSO figures for some time now ever since a blog reader had flagged a few inconsistencies in the recent unemployment figures. Something felt not quite right when you saw the sudden bounce in unemployment that was tantamount to 2,000 less unemployed people over the last year or so. Where had all these persons been employed?
You’d think we’re doing great and that this government has a fantastic plan that stimulates the economy to such an extent as to encourage growth and employment. You’d hope so. The impression that Muscat wants to give is just that in fact – we have created new jobs.
Well, it turns out that the suspicion our readers had when they read this paragraph in a MaltaToday report on the increase in deficit (up by 24 million euros in the first half of 2014) was rather grounded:
In addition, personal emoluments and contributions to government entities increased by €24.6 million and €21.2 million respectively. Operational and Maintenance Expenditure went up by €5.8 million.
Since then we had been trying to find out whether there was any relation between the increase in employment (or decrease in unemployment – whatever tickles your fancy) and the 24.6 million increase in government emoluments. We needed to find out whether there was an increase in public service employment in the last year. To put you into the perspective, the much maligned GonziPN government had succeeded in shrinking the size (and correspondent expenses) of the public service. Less public service employees, less wages. Stands to reason.
Here’s how that trend was described in a the National Employment Policy published by this government in 2014:
In Malta, the public sector remains one of the biggest employers. According to Eurostat statistics, Malta’s public sector administration is the third largest in size in Europe as a ratio of total population. Still, from figure 2.3 it transpires that during the past decade the public sector shrank in size by almost 6,000 employees, from 46,700 in 2004 to 40,900 in 2012 (NSO, 2012; 2013).
So we know for certain that under the dastardly GonziPN the public sector shrank in size by 6,000 employees. More savings, less expenditure for the government. So was this trend confirmed under MuscatPL? Well not really. IN today’s NSO news release we read how the public sector contributed mostly to the increase in employment. And here are the magical numbers that we get from Table 2 of the same news release:
Public Sec 2012 avg 40,893
Public Sec 2013 avg 41,918
Public Sec Mar 2014 43,386
Oops. So all this strutting about claiming an increase in employment is just borne on a wave of bullshit. What has happened is that Muscat PL – Taghna Lkoll has bucked a positive trend of a shrinking public sector that had been going on for a decade. Essentially all these ‘positive’ bites regarding decreasing unemployment, rising employment etc are all the result of Labour reopening wide the gates of government employment. Little wonder then that a large part of the increase in deficit is attributable to government emoluments.
