Malaysia’s labour market momentum escalated in Q1 2022

Commenting on the release of the Labour Market Review, First Quarter 2022 (LMR Q1 2022) recently, Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin, Chief Statistician, Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM), said since the beginning of this year, the government had continued to lift  COVID-19 containment measures implemented for the past two years as all states  shifted into the final phase of National Recovery Plan (NRP).

“More people proceed to conduct business and social activities while ensuring compliance to the standard operating procedures, thus prompting a rise in people’s mobility within and across the states. 

“The flurries of socioeconomic activities continued throughout the quarter as things had practically resumed some semblance of normalcy. Therefore, the economy expanded by 5.0% in the first quarter of 2022 after posting a growth of 3.6% in the previous quarter,” he said in a statement.

From the perspective of labour supply in the first quarter of 2022, Mohd Uzir said the number of employed persons edged up by 2.2% to register 15.57 million persons as against the same quarter of preceding year which recorded 15.24 million persons. 

On the other hand, the number of unemployed persons reduced further by 13.0% to 671,200 persons (Q1 2021: 771,800) while the unemployment rate stood at 4.1% after declining by 0.7 percentage point (Q1 2021: 4.8%). 

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A larger magnitude of employment growth than the decrease in unemployment led the number of labour force to ascend by 1.5% to 16.25 million persons in this quarter. 

Thus, the labour force participation rate (LFPR) improved 0.4 percentage point to 69.0% (Q1 2021: 68.6%), according to Malay Mail.