Malaysia’s unemployment rate rises to 4.8% in June

The unemployment rate rose month-on-month to 4.8% in June, according to the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM).
By: | August 12, 2021
Topics: Health and Wellness | Job Cuts | Malaysia | News

This translates to 768,700 unemployed persons in June, up from the 728,100 in May, with the unemployment rate standing at 4.5% in that month. The unemployment rate increased for the first time in June after four consecutive months of decreases. 

As Malaysia continued to flatten the surge of COVID-19 cases, the labour force was faced with a challenging situation in June following the implementation of the full movement control order when only essential economic and services sectors were permitted to operate, said chief statistician Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin. 

Consequently, the number of employed persons fell to 15.30 million persons in June, down 0.5% from the 15.37 million in May. 

In addition, the actively unemployed – which comprised 83.6% of the total unemployed persons, showed an increase of 33,000 persons to 642,900 persons in June compared to 609,900 persons in May.

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He added that those who were unemployed for less than three months accounted for 52.3% of the actively unemployed, while those in long-term unemployment of more than a year made up 9.8%.  

DOSM’s data also showed an increase of 4,100 self-employed individuals to 2.50 million in June compared to the 2.49 million in May, according to Bernama.