Job mismatch rate among Malaysian graduates more than doubled

The labour mismatch rate among graduates in Malaysia has more than doubled between 2001 and 2019, reveals the Malaysian government in its report on the nation’s economic outlook for 2021. 

According to a cited survey by the nation’s Ministry of Higher Education, 30.6% of respondents with a tertiary education were underemployed, reflecting that young graduates were accepting jobs despite being overqualified. 

The same survey highlights that 13.7% of graduates were unemployed six months after completing their studies. These were students from education; arts and humanities; and agriculture and veterinary backgrounds. 

The report further highlighted that graduates who are employed in the low-and semi-skilled jobs were receiving pay 3 and 2.3 times lower respectively than that of graduates working in the skilled category, based on data from the Department of Statistics Malaysia.

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Competition for skilled jobs has heightened due to the limited number of such jobs, despite ample labour supply. Out of 62,400 vacancies in the market, only 5% were for the skilled workforce, according to data as at December 2019. 

Although over three million new jobs were created in the economy over the past decade, jobs creation has however been concentrated in low-and semi-skilled jobs, it says.