Nationwide study on private sector wages

PUTRAJAYA: The Human Resources Ministry will initiate a study to develop a National Wage Index (NWI) to measure changes in wages and salaries of workers in Malaysia's labour market.

Its minister, Datuk Seri Richard Riot Jaem said the initiative under the 11th Malaysia Plan (11MP) can be a guide to employers and investors in drawing up the structure and level of wages for certain jobs, besides being an input to human resource policies.

He said employees and job seekers could also use NWI to benchmark their market value and assess salary increment throughout their career.

"The government as a policy maker can wield NWI to monitor salary adjustments, input for fixing the salary as well as to revise the minimum wage and policy inputs," he said in a statement yesterday.

He said the NWI study which would be carried out by the Institute for Labour Market Information and Analysis (ILMIA) is based on a quarterly survey that will gather critical payroll information and adjustments from time to time.

Riot said a total of 3,000 private sector organisations nationwide were randomly selected for the study, among them from the plantation sector, mining and quarrying sectors, manufacturing, water supply, the sewerage, wholesale and retail trade, administrative and support services, entertainment and recreation, information and communication as well as real estate.

He said 169 types of jobs had been selected and would be used to form the index which would represent the main jobs in Malaysia.

"Salaries and wages of full-time employees in all job categories from managers to general workers are required for the development of NWI," he said.