KUALA LUMPUR – Total jobs in the economic sector decreased by 0.4%, which is 8.35 million in the second quarter of this year, the Statistics Department reported today.
Chief Statistician Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin said in comparison with the previous quarter, that total jobs decreased further by 0.9% (Q1 2021: -0.4%) indicating uneven recovery momentum in labour demand following the impact of prolonged health crisis and containment measures imposed since March last year.
“With the rise of Covid-19 new daily cases during this quarter, stringent containment measures were implemented since the middle of May that limited business operating hours and permitted only essential services to operate.
“These subsequently were reflected by the decrease of 0.5% in filled jobs, which recorded 8.17 million jobs in Q2 (Q2 2020: 8.21 million),” he said in a statement.
Uzir said that in this quarter, the number of job vacancies in the economic sector was 178,000, which went up by 5% due to the low base number recorded in Q2 2020 at 169,500.
The number of job vacancies remained lower than an average of 200,000 job vacancies recorded during the pre-crisis period. Both rates of filled jobs and job vacancies during the quarter remained at 97.9% and 2.1%, respectively.
Elaborating further on the filled job situation during the second quarter of 2021, he said almost all sectors indicated a downward trend except for the manufacturing sector, which posted an increase of 0.9% (Q1 2021: -0.1%) to register 2.16 million jobs.
In terms of composition by skill category, more than half was in the semi-skilled category with a share of 62.4% (5.1 million) whereas the skilled category made up 24.7% (2.0 million).
“Overall, the demand in the economic sector in this quarter remained on a declining trend as business operations had yet to fully resume normalcy following the current public health crisis situation.
“Nevertheless, the ongoing economic stimulus packages and initiatives implemented by the government may ease the burden of businesses and subsequently enable employment to be retained in the economy.
“In addition, the positive development of the vaccination rate as targeted in the National Recovery Plan will enable businesses to gain more promising impact and lift the recovery momentum of labour demand in Malaysia,” he said. – Bernama, August 12, 2021
