Unemployment in Malaysia
Graduates from all over Malaysia universities are having difficulties to find a job in this country. This can be proven by the results of the past five years unemployment unemployment rate in Malaysia since 2006 until 2010. Last year’s results shows that 3.5% of Malaysians do not have a job. Most of them are graduates from local universities. Why is this happening? Are our graduates not qualified enough to work in their own country? Or the graduates themselves are too choosy? What is the real problem and what is the best solution? Does the government play their role to solve this problem? How did they handle this problem? The first factor is the economy. This is due to the changing of economic structure. In the past, manufacturing was the strongest sector in Malaysia. Nowadays, this sector has been replaced by service sector. Moreover, this sector is the backbone of each sector exists in this country like invest sector, business sector and public sector. As an example, if a person is interview for a j ob in a insurance company, he must show his interpersonal skill, communication skill, wisdom, maturity and his capability to contribute towards the company. Only then, he is hire by the company. As you can see, the company really look up upon the characteristic of a person because they believe a success company should have excellence attitude employee. And that is what our graduates lack of. Quality of education in a country also can be a factor towards up and down in the unemployment of their citizen. I am not denying that our education system is one of the finest educations in the world. The syllabus is fantastic. You can see the increasing number number of straight. There are a lot of students students every year year in SPM or STPM. The question is, “is these academic achievements achievements excel in the real working world?” In our country we also have a lot of degree holder with first class honour. Are
all these satisfy the need in the working field? So, we can improve our education quality by balancing practical and theory at the same level. This will make our graduate not only “know” about it, but also “how” to do it. The main factor contribute towards unemployment are from the j ob seekers who are too choosy about their job. They say that they do not want to work in the field that is not match to what they studied. They thought that it will be such a waste to study but work on a job that has nothing to do with their study. I have an uncle who study about Arts in Writing in Akademi Seni Kebangsaan(now known as ASWARA). After he graduate, he quickly find a job. He do not want to waste time and wasting his parents money. The first job he got is to be a room service in 4-star hotel in Ampang area. He took the job since there is no job for Arts in Writing graduate. His salary at that moment was RM500. After 5 years, his salary is RM1400. This is an example of not a choosy job seeker. Yes, you study Writing Art, but it is okay if you work in hospitality field even though you do not know anything about it because you can always learn. Life is like that, you be too choosy, you will get nothing. What the government can do to reduce and vanish these jobless people. Give them a job. But a lot of sector is using foreign worker. What can government do? Send them back to their country and give the vacancy to our citizen. But we cannot do this immediately. It will give trouble to a lot of people. Never mind. Reduce the using of foreign workers slowly. Then, provide more training and education to the unemployed. This could help them improve their skill and communication. They will become more confident and employable. Unemployment in Malaysia can be solve if there are cooperation from the unemployed, the employer, and the government. By doing this, a lot of money we
can save. We do not have to hire foreign workers. No unemployed graduates will exist and no unsatisfied employer.