21st September 2026 - 5 min read
Unverified data online and artificial intelligence (AI) are two of the biggest challenges facing the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM), says Chief Statistician Siti Asiah Ahmad. DOSM produces Malaysia’s official statistics on prices, jobs, salaries, and household income.
With so much data shared online, it’s hard to tell whether a statistic really came from an official source. “Today, anyone can publish figures, and people may believe them without knowing their source or validity,” Siti Asiah said.
Some statistics you see online are made up. Others are real but shared without saying what they measure or which period they cover.
If you ask an AI chatbot about inflation or salaries, it can give you an answer that sounds sure of itself but is wrong or leaves out key details. It might give you an old rate as if it’s the latest one, or say a statistic came from DOSM when it didn’t.
Siti Asiah said AI could help DOSM produce statistics faster and in more detail, and it could change the kinds of jobs available in statistics and data work. But she said the people using it still need enough knowledge of statistics to review what it produces. “If we do not have the knowledge, we will simply follow what AI produces without the ability to review or develop alongside it,” she said.
When you use a chatbot to look up a statistic, ask it which DOSM release the answer came from. Then open that release yourself and check the rate and the period it covers. If the chatbot can’t name a specific release, don’t use its answer to make a money decision.
Parliament has passed the Statistics Bill 2026, which will replace the Statistics Act 1965. The Dewan Rakyat approved it on 16 July 2026, and the Dewan Negara passed it on 4 August 2026. Economy Minister Akmal Nasrullah Mohd Nasir said on 27 July that the government is aiming to gazette it by the end of 2026. In July, DOSM said it was finalising the guidelines and circulars needed to put the law into practice.
Under the new law, DOSM will be able to share data more easily with other government agencies and private companies. The minister told Parliament that information collected about individuals, households, or businesses for statistics can’t be shared or used for any other purpose, except as permitted by law. Once the law is in force, that rule will cover your answers to DOSM surveys. Answering those surveys also gives DOSM more accurate data, which the government uses to plan its policies.
A lot of viral statistics are passed around on WhatsApp, often with no link to where they came from. Siti Asiah said it’s even more worrying when people claim a statistic came from DOSM, even though DOSM never published it. Once a statistic like this spreads, you might use it to plan your spending or judge a job offer. DOSM plans to keep correcting wrong statistics that use its name.
Before you pass on a statistic or use it for a money decision, ask the person who shared it where it came from. Then look for the original release on the DOSM portal or OpenDOSM. The release shows you whether DOSM published the statistic, when it came out, and which period it covers. Check the release date and the period separately, because some reports come out months after the period their data covers.
Viral salary charts sometimes show old pay, or pay that DOSM never reported. You can check them against the official Salaries & Wages Survey Report instead.
DOSM released the latest edition on 21 September 2026. It covers salaries earned in 2025. The report breaks pay down by groups such as age and education level, so you can see what people with a background similar to yours earned last year.
Look at the median salary as well as the average (mean). The median is what the person right in the middle earns, while a few very high earners can pull the average up. In 2025, half of all employees earned RM2,940 a month or less. The average was RM863 higher, at RM3,803.
If you’re a fresh graduate comparing a job offer with the report, use the median for your age group and education level. Keep in mind that pay may have gone up since 2025. If you base a salary request on a fake or out-of-date average, you could be asking for less than employers are paying now.
Before you trust an inflation rate you’ve seen online, check how old it is and whether it covers all spending or just one type. The latest DOSM release has the official rate.
Inflation reports come out much sooner than the salary report. DOSM’s Consumer Price Index for August 2026 came out on 18 September 2026 and showed that prices rose 1.9% compared with August 2025. On average, shopping that cost RM100 in August 2025 cost RM101.90 a year later. You can use this to check whether your pay is keeping up. A salary that went up by 3% over the same year rose faster than average prices. One that didn’t go up at all now buys a little less than before.
Your own costs may have gone up by more or less than 1.9%, depending on what you buy. In August 2026, transport prices rose 2.0%, and food and drinks rose 1.9%. Check the rates for the types of spending that take up most of your budget. Plan next year’s grocery and petrol spending with the wrong inflation rate, and you could set aside too little.
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As a creative content writer, Eloise has covered finance, business, lifestyle topics, and even moonlights as a singer-songwriter outside of RinggitPlus. Her current interests are learning the best ways to optimise spending and credit card hacks to gain more airline miles.
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