Malaysia unemployment rate unchanged at 3.3% in May

Malaysia’s unemployment rate in May 2018 remained at 3.3% for four consecutive months, according to the Statistics Department.

Year-on-year, the unemployment rate fell by 0.1 percentage point as compared to 3.4% in the same month of 2017, the department said in a statement today.

“Number of unemployed persons recorded a total of 504.8 thousand persons, decreased 0.5% against May 2017,” it added.

On a seasonally adjusted month-on-month basis, the unemployment rate in May 2018 remained at 3.3% as compared to the previous month.

Meanwhile, the department said that labour force participation rate in May 2018 increased by 0.2 percentage points to 68.4% as compared to the previous month.

Year-on-year showed that the labour force participation rate increased by 0.6 percentage points, it added.

During the same period, employed persons increased 2.8% after registering 2.6% growth in the previous month.

As at May 2018, the country’s labour force stood at 15.4 million.