LETTERS: The unprecedented twin crises — health and economic — have cost many lives and livelihoods across the world and Malaysia is not spared.
One of the main challenges is the underemployment of graduates. People who are underemployed are classified as those with high skills, but working in low-paid or low-skilled jobs.
The heavy blow caused by the pandemic will worsen the underemployment situation here because many people have been let go by employers through retrenchments or voluntary separation schemes. It becomes harder for graduates to get jobs because times are really tough for everyone.
According to the Social Security Organisation's (Socso) classification of graduate and non-graduate jobs based on qualification levels, it can be observed that jobs for graduates (diploma, degree holders and anything above) should ideally be within the skilled jobs category or can be referred to as PMET jobs — professionals, managers, executives and technicians.
Non-graduate jobs are semi-skilled or low-skilled jobs, including clerical support workers, services and sales workers, craft and related trade workers, plant and machine operators, assemblers and elementary workers.
It could be a relief to see an expansion of graduate employment as a whole with an increase of 342,900 persons from 4.9 million in 2018 to 5.3 million last year.
The employment rate in PMET jobs also rose by 6.1 per cent year on year in 2019, higher than 5.6 per cent year on year in 2018.
Nonetheless, the number of graduates who are being employed for jobs lower than their qualification levels, has also picked up. Of the total, the share of those in semi-skilled occupations has been rising between 2016 and 2019, from 22.1 per cent to 25.6 per cent.
By looking at the number and growth, graduates in semi-skilled jobs rose from 0.99 million to 1.1 million last year — a 9.3 per cent year on year expansion. On average, between 2016 and 2019, there were 74.9 per cent of jobs created for graduates in the skilled segments matching diploma and degree qualifications.
But 25.1 per cent of jobs for graduates were in lower-skilled occupations, suggesting a mismatch in the labour market for graduates.
Even the weekly vacancies on MyFutureJobs portal up to Oct 9 show the top 10 occupations are dominated by non-graduate jobs, especially factory workers (26,772) and sales assistants (22,076).
The number of degree and diploma graduates is increasing over the years but the industry demand is not catering to them sufficiently by offering more low-skilled jobs. Plus, graduates are not paid the right amount of wages, hence, causing an unequal distribution of income.
For instance, using the median wage classification by Socso, there is a huge gap of RM1,000 between a graduate holding an executive role (a graduate job) and being a clerical support worker (a non-graduate job). So, this calls for a serious attention as graduates will keep on coming into the labour market and, if it is not addressed efficiently, this structural issue will prolong.
Perhaps, we can learn from the successful cooperation between SkillsFuture and Workforce Singapore in helping Singaporeans make well-informed decisions in terms of education, training and career, relevant to the changing industrial needs.
Realistically, it is not easy to manage the issue of underemployment at times of crisis, but this matter needs to be looked into sooner or later.
Nur Sofea Hasmira Azahar
Research Analyst, EMIR Research
Kuala Lumpur