67% vacancies are menial jobs

They don’t appeal to 210,000 grads registered with govt’s job-matching portal

PETALING JAYA: The highest number of job vacancies in the country are for elementary occupations, according to JobsMalaysia, an online job-matching system provided by the Human Resources Ministry.

A total of 624,653 jobs which involve simple, routine and non-systematic tasks were made available on the portal between January and October this year, making up 67.72% of all vacancies.

Of the jobs available, over 126,000 vacancies fell under the professional and semi-professional employment.

Elementary occupations require workers to perform simple, routine and non-systematic tasks mainly with the use of handheld tools or with the assistance of simple machines, and in some cases considerable physical effort.

Professional and semi-professional jobs come under the categories of professionals; technicians and associate professionals; clerical support workers; service and sales workers; skilled agricultural, forestry, livestock and fishery workers; and plant and machine operators and assemblers.

As of Nov 31, there were over 210,000 graduate job seekers and over 80,000 non-graduates registered with the portal.

Malaysian Trades Union Congress secretary-general J. Solomon has identified low pay as one of main reasons menial jobs are not taken up by locals.

“Salary at RM1,100 with overtime is not enough for locals but it will suffice for migrants who don’t have a family here,” he told theSun.

People today look forward to quality life with their families and they cannot be expected to work very long hours whereas migrant workers are willing to do so, he said.

It would be wrong to describe Malaysians as lazy because many multinational corporations (MNCs) have stated that Malaysians are hardworking, Solomon said.

That is why so many MNCs have open operations here, he added.

“Malaysian employers’ obsession for artificial intelligence and digitalisation has caused job losses for many local workers.

“Many workers, especially those performing clerical functions, are losing their jobs speedily to IT in addition to foreigners.

“They (local workers) are not being upskilled and their livelihood is being ignored,” Solomon said.