KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s labour productivity increased 3.6 per cent to RM81,039 in 2017 from RM78,244 previously, said the Department of Statistics.
It said this was in line with the expansion of value added of the sector by 5.9 per cent (2016: 4.2 per cent) and employment by 2.2 per cent (2016: 0.7 per cent).
As for the fourth quarter (4Q), the country’s labour productivity grew 3.6 per cent to RM85,031 after registering a 4.1 per cent growth to RM82,433 in Q3 2017.
“The agriculture sector registered labour productivity growth of 4.8 per cent in Q4 (Q3 2017: 5.2 per cent) at RM55,490. The value added of this sector increased significantly at 10.7 per cent (Q3 2017: 4.1 per cent) while employment rebounded to 5.6 per cent (Q3 2017: -1.1 per cent),” it said.
As for the labour productivity for mining and quarrying sector, it turned around to 4.7 per cent (RM1,240,137) from a negative growth of 8.5 per cent in the previous quarter.
Value added of this sector recorded a marginal decrease of 0.5 per cent (Q3 2017: +3.1 per cent), while employment declined at a faster rate of 5.0 per cent (Q3 2017: +12.6 per cent).
The manufacturing sector labour productivity increased 3.6 per cent (Q3 2017: 5.1) at RM115,434. In this quarter, value added rose 5.4 per cent (Q3 2017: 7.0 per cent) while employment grew slightly by 1.8 per cent (Q3 2017: 1.7 per cent).
The construction sector recorded labour productivity growth of 1.4 per cent (Q3 2017: 4.8 per cent) at RM39,967. The growth of value added of this sector was 5.8 per cent (Q3 2017: 6.1 per cent), while employment rose 4.3 per cent (Q3 2017: 1.2 per cent).
The Labour Productivity of Services sector increased 4.7 per cent (Q3 2017: 3.7 per cent) in this quarter with a value of RM76,794.
The value added of this sector registered a growth of 6.2 per cent (Q3 2017: 6.5 per cent), while employment grew 1.5 per cent (Q3 2017: 2.7 per cent).