KUALA LUMPUR (July 16): The Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) revealed that 3.2% of the total 5.29 million graduates in 2019 were unemployed. About 83.5% were in the labour force while 16.5% were outside the labour force. Of the graduates that were in the labour force, about 96.1% were employed while 3.9% were unemployed.

"The number of unemployed graduates in 2019 was 170,300, an increase of 5.5% from 2018 of 161,300.

However, it noted that 74.8% of unemployed graduates were actively seeking work, while 25.2% of those were not job-hunting.

"More than half of active unemployed graduates were unemployed less than three months at 51.6% while 29.5% of them were unemployed within three months and less than six months," DOSM noted.

It added that 10.9% of them were unemployed within six months and less than a year, whereas another 8.1% were unemployed more than a year.

DOSM data also showed that the number of employed graduates in 2019 rose by 6.9% to 4.25 million from 3.97 million in 2018.

Meanwhile, the DOSM noted that the participation of graduates in the labour force decreased by 0.1 percentage point to 83.5% in 2019, while the number of graduates outside the labour force in 2019 increased by 7.6% to 871,400 from 2018.

A significant reason given by graduates for being outside the labour force was housework/family responsibilities that accounted for 36.8% in 2019 followed by retired/old age (30%), schooling/training programme (27.6%) and graduates who were not interested/just completed study (3.3%).

Data also showed that the percentage of unemployed female graduates was higher at 4.2% compared to that of unemployment male at 3.5%.