Report: Unemployed Fresh Graduates In Malaysia Increased By 22.5% In 2020

The Covid-19 outbreak has turned almost every aspect of our lives, country and economy into pandemonium.

The implementation of various Movement Control Orders (MCOs) has led to the increase in the number of job losses and subsequently increased the rate of unemployment to 718,100 people in 2020.

According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM), fresh graduates have also been heavily affected by the pandemic, as competition to land jobs is more intense than ever and there are many unemployed people scouting the job market.

While the number of graduates has increased by 4.4% from 5.13 million graduates in 2019 to 5.36 million graduates in 2020, the number of unemployed graduates has also increased by 22.5%. In 2019, there were 165,200 unemployed graduates, while in 2020, there were 202,400 unemployed graduates.

This increased the unemployment rate from 3.9% in 2019, to 4.4% in 2020.

Based on a report by BERNAMA, Chief Statistician Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin shared that this is due to the unfavourable economic environment and its consequences to the overall job market.

“More than 75 per cent of unemployed graduates were actively seeking work whereby almost half were unemployed for less than three months,” he said.

And from the total overall of unemployed graduates, 21.7% of them, or 44,900 graduates in 2020 were inactive in searching for jobs.

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Also read: Survey: Average Salaries of Malaysians See Significant Decline As Compared To 2019