Online job postings declined by 26% in Malaysia for July year-on-year, in an indication that the Malaysian job market has yet to show signs of recovery, according to the Monster Employment Index (MEI) Malaysia.

The index, which keeps track of monthly online job posting activity, found that this is a 2% drop from June’s year-on-year decline of 24%.

“The overall slowdown of Malaysia’s manufacturing sector is likely to be contributing to the stunted growth we have registered across numerous industries and occupations at the moment,” Sanjay Modi, managing director for Monster.com (India, Middle East, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong) said in a statement.

“Slightly weaker conditions could have led to a decline in market demand ― thus easing up hiring activity.

“However, banking professionals continue to experience steady growth, as more international banks move their services to Malaysia and are in need of specialised and experienced local talent,” he added.

Across all nine industries monitored by the MEI, the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) industry is the only sector that has a positive year-on-year growth, increasing by 12% between June 2014 and June this year, increasing seven percentage points between June and July this year.

The IT, Telecom/ISP and BPO/ITES industry also experienced significant improvements over the past month, despite recording a drop of 3% in year-on-year growth for July. The sector had registered a drop of 22% in year-on-year growth in June.

There was, however, no positive year-on-year growth registered across the nine occupation groups covered by the index, though demand for finance and accounts remained at the same index level as the same period last year.

At the other end of the scale, the report noted that hospitality and travel jobs registered the steepest year-on-year decline for July at 35%. Marketing and communications job roles saw the least decline, down by 9%.

Meanwhile, the annual online demand for software, hardware, telecom roles also dipped further than the previous month at 31%.

The MEI is a gauge of online job posting activity, based on a real-time review of millions of employer job opportunities culled from a large representative selection of career web sites and online job listings across the country Malaysia.