Malaysia’s unemployment rate in July 2022 stood at 3.7%, down 1.1% year-on-year, according to research from Statistics Malaysia.

Over the month, the unemployment rate fell slightly by 0.1%.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, Statistics Malaysia estimates the unemployment rate remained at 3.6%.

The number of unemployed persons in July 2022, which was 620,700 persons, remained on a downward trend with a decrease of 1.6% month-on-month and down 20.2% year-on-year.

The number of employed persons totalled 15.98 million, up 4.5% over the year and by 0.3% over the month.

In terms of the economic sector, employment in the Services sector continued to expand, largely in Food & beverages services; Wholesale & retail trade and Administrative & support service activities. Likewise, employment in the Manufacturing and Construction sectors also increased, while employed persons in the Agriculture and Mining & quarrying sectors declined.

By status in employment, the employee’s category was the largest composition of employed persons with a share of 76.0%. This category rose over the month by 0.2%. Own-account workers (self-employed), continued to trend up with an addition of 21,300 persons (+0.8%) to 2.79 million persons (June 2022: 2.77 million persons). This was followed by employers and unpaid family workers.

The labour force participation rate stood at 69.6%, up 1.3% over the year and up 0.1% over the month.