THE labour market continued its recovery at a steady pace in the third quarter (Q3) of 2022, with the unemployment rate lowered to 3.7% against 4.7% in the same quarter of last year, in a return to pre-pandemic levels.

In a statement today, the Statistics Department said in line with this, the number of unemployed persons decreased by 18% to 611,800 persons 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 persons as 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 persons in the quarter. Hence, the labour force participation rate strengthened further by 1.1 percentage points to 69.4% (Q3 2021: 68.3%),” it said.

Chief statistician 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 Covid pandemic.

“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.

For the underemployment situation, he said with the strengthening of domestic demand throughout the third quarter of this year, the number of persons working fewer than 30 hours per week persisted in trending down, with a decline of 38.2% against the same quarter in 2021, registering 287,200 persons (Q3 2021: 464,600).

On the performance of labour demand, Uzir said total jobs in the economic sector continued to improve by recording a year-on-year increase of 3.2% to 8.68 million jobs (Q3 2021: 8.41 million), surpassing the pre-pandemic level.

“Moving into the fourth quarter of 2022, economic and social activities continue to normalise as the current Malaysia’s leading index is anticipating that the economy will continue to uphold its growth momentum.

“Hence, the overall labour market performance is also foreseen to sustain its positive momentum and be more resilient, signalling that Malaysia’s labour market is recovering, steered by the current development of the economic activity,” he said.

However, he said the viewpoint is subject to the various challenges in mitigating the effects of slow growth in the global economy and trade activity, as well as the impact of the flood disaster that may occur following the northeast monsoon that started earlier this month and is likely to continue until next March. – Bernama, November 17, 2022.