Malaysia's Labour Market Hits Post-Pandemic High In 2024, Unemployment At 3.2 Pct
GENERAL
PUTRAJAYA, June 30 (Bernama) -- Malaysia's labour market gained momentum in 2024, recording its strongest post-pandemic performance yet, with key indicators showing improvement and stability expected to persist into 2025, the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) said today.
According to DOSM's Annual Statistics of the Labour Force, Malaysia 2024, the unemployment rate fell to 3.2 per cent, dipping below the pre-pandemic level of 3.3 per cent recorded in 2019.
The number of unemployed persons also dropped to 534,100, driven largely by a decline in unemployment among youths aged 15 to 24.
'Concurrently, the labour force increased by 3.3 per cent to 16.90 million persons compared to 16.37 million persons in the previous year. The labour force participation rate (LFPR) also rose to a new record high of 70.6 per cent from 70 per cent in 2023,' DOSM said in a statement here today.
The number of employed persons also saw positive annual growth, rising by 3.5 per cent to 16.37 million from 15.81 million in 2023, it said.
"Accordingly, the employment-to-population ratio, which indicates the ability of an economy to create employment, also increased by 0.7 percentage points to 68.4 per cent from 67.7 per cent in 2023," it said.
DOSM said in terms of employment status, 78.5 per cent of employed persons were classified as employees' category while the number of own-account workers category went up to 2.52 million persons, accounting for 15.4 per cent of total employment.
It said most employed persons remained in semi-skilled occupations, representing 56.5 per cent of total employment or approximately 9.26 million persons, followed by skilled occupations (4.94 million persons) and low-skilled occupations category (2.17 million persons).
From a sectoral perspective, employment remained dominant in the services sector which continued its upward trend and comprised 65.6 per cent of the total employment followed by the manufacturing sector at 16.3 per cent and agriculture sector at 9.0 per cent.
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