Malaysia's Unemployed

I was just reading the BBC this morning and found that the US unemployment rate is currently 6.1%, and I immediately thought, "Gee, that's really high". And then I felt guilty because, for all I know, Malaysia's unemployment rate could be in the teens (though I would have remembered that). 

So I made a quick trip to Google (the birthchild of which rocks my box - Google Chrome) and made my way to Malaysia's Department of Statistics, which had a really useful link straight to Key Indicators of the Labour Market 2001-2007.

Here's the breakdown in % of population as at 2007:

• Unemployment: 3.2%
• No. of persons who work less than 20 hours a week: 2.0%
• Youth unemployment: 10.9%
• Youth unemployment as a proportion of total unemployment: 64.9%
• Long-term unemployment: 0.2%
• Long-term unemployment as a proportion of total unemployment: 7.5%
• Percentage of unemployment by educational attainment:

1. No education: 2.2%
2. Primary school: 11.1%
3. Secondary school: 61.6%
4. Tertiary education: 25.1%

• Inactive rate (working age): 36.8%
• Inactive rate (youth): 58.4%
• Illiteracy rate of population aged 15-24: 1.5%
• Illiteracy rate of population aged 25 and over: 6.4%

That's actually not too bad. Our unemployment rate is (was) only 3.2%, though it's undoubtedly gone higher by now. Do I think this is understated? Probably, but the usual method of understatement is to count those who work just a couple of hours a week as employed, which they have. But they also gave the figure as just 2.0% of the labour force, which is miniscule.

What's interesting is that those who have no education at all and those who have just a primary school education are more employed than those who have a tertiary education. Though they probably just don't have career goals. 

And there it is - another Malaysian statistic that Malaysians should know.