Malaysia’s labour market continues recovery

In a statement, the Department of Statistics said this showed that the situation is slowly returning to how it was before the pandemic. In line with this, the number of unemployed persons decreased by 18% to 611,800 people from 746,200 recorded in the same quarter last year. 

“In terms of labour supply in the third quarter of 2022, the number of employed persons rose by 3.6% to 15.83 million against the same quarter of the preceding year, which recorded 15.70 million. 

“Higher employment growth than the decline in unemployment led to the number in the labour force to increase by 2.6% to 16.44 million. Hence, the labour force participation rate (LFPR) strengthened further by 1.1 percentage points to 69.4% (Q3 2021: 68.3%),” the Department of Statistics said.

Chief Statistician Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin said in the third quarter of 2022, the country’s transition to the endemic phase allowed Malaysians to return to near-normal life after two years of battling the pandemic.

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“Therefore, the economy continued to strengthen by 14.2% in this quarter after posting a growth of 8.9% in the previous quarter. Subsequently, employment continued to register a higher year-on-year increase while unemployment eased following the recovery of demand for labour by the economic sectors,” he said, reported The Star.