BASED on a report by the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM), the COVID-19 pandemic influenced business operations on a massive scale, contributing to high unemployment rates throughout the first half of 2020.
In May 2020, the unemployment rate was at its highest at 5.3%. Subsequently, as more economic sectors continued to resume, the unemployment rate fell to 4.7% in July and remained so until August.
The report, titled ‘Malaysian Economic Statistics Review (MESR) Vol 6/2020’, also highlights the need to investigate the underlying issues of employment in order to fully comprehend the country’s labour market situation.
On this, DOSM chief statistician Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin said: “DOSM is looking at the measurement of underemployment indicators to provide additional insight into the labour market.”
“One of the measures is time-related underemployment, which refers to the situation of people working fewer than 30 hours per week but were able and willing to accept additional hours of work,” he added.
Data from the report showed that the first quarter of 2020 saw the number in time-related underemployment doubled as against last year to record 383,300 people. This number further escalated in the second quarter of 2020 to record 412,100 thousand people.
The increase could be attributed to businesses reducing operation hours and alternating working days to ensure adherence to the standard operating procedures during the phases of movement control order (MCO).
In terms of economic perspective, Malaysia’s manufacturing sales in August 2020 was valued at RM118.5 bil compared to RM119.2 bil in July of this year while merchandise trade performance for both exports and imports declined 14.5% and 2.2% respectively from the month of July 2020.
However, Malaysia’s merchandise exports in September 2020 recorded a compelling annual growth of 13.6%. At the same instant, imports continued to show signs of recovery with a smaller decline 3.6% attributable to better performance of capital and consumption goods.
The sales value of wholesale & retail trade continued a positive growth of 2.5% in August 2020 against the previous month, mainly driven by the growth in wholesale trade. This sector is gradually recovering on year on year basis with narrowing negative growth which is expected to improve further in September 2020.
“Based on the economic performance for July and August 2020, the third quarter is expected to be better than the second quarter despite the reoccurrence of the COVID-19 cases towards the end of September 2020,” Mohd Uzir said.
“However, as Malaysia recently entered the third wave of the COVID-19 outbreak, with the enforcement of CMCO in Sabah, Selangor, W.P. Kuala Lumpur and W.P. Putrajaya, there is a challenging economic conditions ahead. These states contribute 46.6% to the economy in 2019, thus, any consequence on industries’ activities within these areas will have an impact to the overall country’s economic performance,” he added,
Nevertheless, Mohd Uzir believes that the targeted CMCO is seen as the best approach to mitigate the effect of the pandemic and to regain the economic recovery momentum.
DOSM will be releasing the third quarter results on 2020’s gross domestic product (GDP) on Nov 13, 2020. – Oct 29, 2020
