PETALING JAYA: Malaysia’s unemployment rate in March 2020 increased to 3.9%, mainly attributed to the adverse impact of the movement control order (MCO) on the labour market.
Chief statistician Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin said unemployed persons increased by 17.1% to 610,500 in March as compared to 521,300 in the same month of 2019.
The number of labour forces in this month decreased 0.2% to 15.84 million as compared to February. Simultaneously, employed persons also decreased 0.7% to 15.23 million persons.
“Out of the total number of employed persons, 2.81 million were own account workers such as small traders/ entrepreneurs (pasar tani/ night market/ catering / freelancers etc) who earn daily income/ wages,” Uzir said in a statement today.
He said they were exposed to the risk of unemployment and work loss that can affect income during the MCO partly because they were unable to work or run their business.
The highest unemployment rate in the country was recorded at 7.4% in 1986.
The labour force participation rate in March declined by 0.1 percentage points to 68.6% from 68.7% recorded in the previous month after recording the highest rate (68.9%) in January.
For the quarter, the unemployment rate increased to 3.5% as compared to 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2019 due to the sharp increase in unemployment rate in March 2020. Furthermore, it is the highest ever recorded since the second quarter of 2017.
The number of unemployed increase 5.8% to 546,600 persons, as compared to the same quarter last year. Out of the total number of unemployed, graduate unemployment accounted for 29.3%.
The unemployment category for the youth age group of 15 to 30 years recorded the highest unemployment rate (6.9%), followed by 31 to 45 years (1.4%) and 46 to 64 (1.1%).
Source: The Sun Daily