Malaysia has misleading labour statistics - economist

The country has misleading data on labour and foreign workers, according to economist Jomo Kwame Sundaram, warning that it has led to failure in having a serious grasp of issues.

Speaking at a forum this morning, he pointed out a disparity between Malaysia's statistics for foreign labour with telecommunication companies' estimates.

"Based on the telco estimates, there were about 6.7 million (foreign workers). But at that time, if we look at the labour data, what we can find is 15 million people in Malaysia's labour force. (It stated that) a full 13 million workers were citizens, while another 2.2 million were foreigners.

"In other words, two-thirds of foreign workers were not recorded and recognised," he said.

Jomo (above) was one of the panellists at a forum during the Malaysia Economic Summit 2022 in Kuala Lumpur, a programme organised by KSI Strategic Institute for Asia Pacific.

It is believed that he was referring to estimates made in 2014. The then human resources minister Richard Riot reportedly had said that there were about 6.7 million foreign workers in the country, with more than half of them without permits.

According to a Department of Statistics newsletter in 2020, there were 14.7 million workers in Malaysia in 2018, including 2.18 million foreign workers. The number of foreign workers was said to have decreased by 2.7 percent in 2018 compared to 2.24 million in 2017.

Jomo told the forum that it is important for the country to recognise the contribution of foreign workers, which he said has huge implications.

He added that by not taking into account the number of undocumented foreign workers here, the country's estimates of productivity are distorted.

"I think it's very important to recognise the huge implications contributed by the foreign workers. However, we don't have a serious grasp of the issues.

"Since our official statistics exclude foreign workers, especially the undocumented foreign workers, it’s important to know that we actually have misleading labour statistics.

"The other point we should make is that our estimates of productivity are grossly distorted when we exclude the presence of undocumented foreign workers by not taking into account the role of non-citizens in the Malaysian economy.

"They simply do not reflect what the actual situation is," he said.- Mkini