Thanks to the economic activity revival Covid-19 lockdown, Malaysia’s official employment services portal recorded that the number of job vacancies has went up last year. But, the biggest growth in new openings was for jobs that only offered salaries of RM2,000 or less.

According to a report compiled by Social Security Organisation’s (Socso) Employment Insurance System (EIS), job vacancies recorded in the MyFutureJobs portal grew by 232.8% to 2,480,577 openings in 2021 compared to 745,304 in 2020.

As reported by The Star, The figures show that the biggest growth in 2021 was for jobs in the RM1,200-RM2,000 salary range, which made up 57.6% of the 2.48mil vacancies offered on the job portal. In comparison, only 31% of the openings MyFutureJobs in 2020 offered the same salary range. The bulk or 60% of new jobs in 2020 fell within a higher salary range of RM2,001 to RM3,000.

In 2021, industries with the largest share of vacancies were from the manufacturing industry with 603,216 vacancies, followed by accommodation and food and beverage with 323,624 vacancies and wholesale with 249,744 vacancies.

Online employment company JobStreet Malaysia is tracking a somewhat similar trend. It said that last year saw an increase in the number of job vacancies with salaries of less than RM2,500.

“There were more than one-and-a-half times job vacancies advertised offering a salary range of RM1,000 to RM2,499 compared to the year before, with the top industries including food and beverage, catering, restaurant, manufacturing, production, retail and merchandise,” said JobStreet Malaysia managing director Vic Sithasanan.

He added that many of the lower paying jobs once filled by foreign workers are now vacant because foreign workers who returned to their countries face challenges getting back to Malaysia. As a result, their employers are now offering the work to locals.

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