PUTRAJAYA, Dec 16 — Most employers had retained their workers by paying lower wages and salaries following the slower demand for labour during the COVID-19 pandemic, Chief Statistician Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin said.
“Although seen as a better short-term alternative, it will affect the quality of work and the workers’ wellbeing in the long run,” he said at the Labour Market Forum 2021 held virtually today.
Mohd Uzir said the labour market was now facing challenges to remain competitive following the COVID-19 pandemic, and issues of unemployment and structural unemployment, among others, had to be tackled to ensure the country’s capability for economic recovery.
Among the challenges are the continuous increase in the skill-related underemployment rate since the third quarter of 2020.
“The structural unemployment can be linked to the slow demand for labour in the skilled job category. This shows that industries are facing a problem to absorb the supply of tertiary-educated labour or workers with jobs that matched their educational background,” he said.
Mohd Uzir said the reduction of operating hours of the economic sectors during the pandemic had also contributed to the increase of time-related underemployment rate to 2.2 per cent in the third quarter of 2021 from the quarterly average of 1.3 per cent in 2019.
“The increase of employment in this category involving those who can afford and are willing to have more working hours can be linked to the transition to a flexible job arrangement in terms of time and place of work,” he said, adding that among those in the category are gig workers.
Meanwhile, he said the country’s labour market had shown a recovery trend by recording a lower unemployment rate of 4.3 per cent last October with the number of unemployed at 705,000 people.
Despite being the lowest rate recorded since March 2020, it still surpassed the rate recorded before the pandemic, which is around 3.3 per cent or approximately 500,000 unemployed people.
“Most countries including the United States, United Kingdom and Canada have not been able to get their unemployment rate back as it was before the pandemic,” he said.
During the forum, the interactive portal offering information on the labour market, Malaysia Labour Market Interactive Data (MyLMID), was also launched to enable the official labour market data in the form of charts and interactive visuals to be quickly accessible.
Mohd Uzir said MyLMID, developed by the Malaysian Bureau of Labour Statistics (MBLS), also offered the concept and definition of data measurement as well as documentation of technical papers by MBLS.
“The aspirations behind the development of MyLMID are, among others, to help users to access the data quicker than by using the existing method which requires a waiting period for the data to be provided,” he said, adding that the portal would be improved from time to time.
MyLMID can be accessed at www.dosm.gov.my or https://mbls.dosm.gov.my/mylmid/dashboard.html.
