Malaysia’s unemployment rate in February 2022 has decreased slightly from January’s 4.2% to 4.1%, said the latest labour force report from the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM). This translates to 671,800 unemployed individuals, as compared to 680,400 in January.

Chief statistician Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin attributed this improvement to the fact that all economic and social activities were able to be in operation during the month, which in turn, led to more labour demands by businesses. “Subsequently, it led to the reduction in the number of unemployment and lower unemployment rate during the month,” he said.

Of the total unemployed individuals, 83.7% of them fell under the actively unemployed category – a number which decreased by 1.2% from 569,500 individuals in January to 562,500 individuals in February. The inactively unemployed, too, fell by 1.4% from 110,900 persons in January to 109,300 persons.

Meanwhile, the number of employed persons continued to grow month-on-month, increasing by 0.2% from 16.37 million persons in January to 16.4 million in February. As always, the employee category made up the largest composition of the group, with a share of 76.6%. This is a month-on-month rise of 0.1% to 12.05 million persons from January. The own-account workers’ category also increased by 0.7% in February to register 2.67 million persons from 2.66 million in January.

Aside from that, the number of persons outside of the labour force continued to decrease, from 7.33 million persons in January to 7.32 million in February. Of the number, 41.7% recorded that they were not working due to household or family duties, while 40.9% was due to schooling and training.

Moving forward, Datuk Seri Dr Uzir said that the country’s transition to the endemic phase should help to improve the country’s employment rate. This is especially with the reopening of international borders and removal of various other restrictions that allow all economic and business activities to continue operating.

“This encourages more international travel activities to take place and helps to revitalise the country’s tourism sector as well as tourism-related activities. The reopening of the country’s borders is also seen as a catalyst to revive the shortage of foreign labour in the market,” Datuk Seri Dr Uzir further said.

(Source: DOSM [1, 2])

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• Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin
• Department of Statistics Malaysia
• DOSM
• Malaysia Unemployment Rate
• Unemployment
• Unemployment Rate