There are six recent college graduates vying for one highly trained position.
This is one of the World Bank’s findings that emphasized the stark disparity between the number of graduates from higher education and the jobs that Malaysia offers that fit their skills.
Such a development, according to World Bank economist Alyssa Farha Jasmin, not only indicates a dearth of highly skilled employment possibilities in the nation, but also a discrepancy between the skills of recent graduates and the skills that employers actually need.
She was concerned that failure to solve this issue could impede the nation’s path toward sustainable high-income status.
The most recent World Bank Malaysia Economic Monitor (MEM) study, which was made public last month, states that the nation’s percentage of skills-related underemployment increased from 27.2 percent in 2010 to 37.3 percent in 2022.
According to a Human Resources Development Corporation study, over 82% of employers said that their current staff lacked the necessary training or expertise, she continued.
“A World Bank study in 2020 also reported that more than 40 percent of companies in the manufacturing and services sectors were struggling to find workers with leadership, communication, problem-solving, and general IT skills,” she stated.
She went on to say that a large number of job searchers are drawn to flexible work schedules, which encourages them to look for positions in the gig economy, contributing to the problem of underemployment.
She claimed that this is one of the things that deters job searchers from pursuing highly specialized positions.
According to her, workers in the gig economy are free to work whenever and whenever they choose, and some of them can even make as much money as those in traditional professions.
However, she noted that gig economy employment typically include a lot of physical labor and pose a lot of dangers.
For instance, gig workers may be unable to work for a long time after a traffic accident and may not have access to social security programs, which could result in unemployment.
“So, if this issue continues, Malaysia may face an increase in the outflow of skilled workers.
“This will reduce productivity and increase widespread underemployment, which will pose a barrier to Malaysia’s progress towards a high-income economy,” she stated.
The World Bank’s conclusions are also consistent with a recent study conducted by the Khazanah Research Institute (KRI), which discovered that the employment market for Malaysian university graduates is still dire and that starting salaries for fresh graduates have remained almost unchanged over the last ten years.
According to the KRI survey, 60% of recent graduates in 2021 were paid less than RM2,000 for their first employment, up from 61% in 2010.
