Sivakumar: Unemployment rate down due to strategic cooperation

Strategic cooperation with various government ministries and agencies has reduced the country’s unemployment rate from 599,600 in the fourth quarter of 2022 to 588,700 people in the first quarter of this year, said Human Resources Minister V Sivakumar.

He said the interstate unemployment rate also reduced in tandem with the decline in the national unemployment rate, with Putrajaya recording the lowest rate of unemployment of 0.8 percent, followed by Perlis (2.1 percent), Penang (2.3 percent) and Negeri Sembilan (2.5 percent).

Some of the Human Resources Ministry’s initiatives implemented through the Social Security Organisation (Socso), Talentcorp, Human Resource Development Corp (HRDC) and the Skills Development Department included the job portal MyFutureJobs.

The portal is a virtual platform to match jobs based on qualifications, skills, wages and employers’ needs to help job seekers get employment opportunities.

“A total of 793,086 job seekers have been employed as of April,” he said in a statement today.

In a bid to boost job offers by employers, Sivakumar said Socso implemented interview sessions at all state offices on a daily and weekly basis as well as large-scale employment carnivals.

For this year, he said a total of 4,130 programmes are targeted and, as of April, 1,127 programmes have been implemented, with 5,121 job seekers finding employment.

In addition, Sivakumar said the government has also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with government-linked companies (GLCs) and private companies covering training to overcome the problems of mismatch and unemployment among Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) students.

Under Budget 2023, the ministry has been given the mandate to implement the active labour market programme initiative that was launched on May 1, he said.

This included the employment transition programme for TVET apprentices and school leavers or TVET Career, which provides an incentive payment of RM600 per month for three months to employers who employ TVET graduates.

The informal gig riders career building programme also provides a RM300 monthly allowance for three months to gig riders who actively undergo skills training to obtain stable jobs in the formal sector as well as skills improvement programmes for TVET apprentices and school leavers, Sivakumar added.

In addition, he said the extension of targeted employment incentives through the Daya Kerjaya programme, which involves job placement for target groups like the youth who have been unemployed for a long time and vulnerable groups, including the hardcore poor, parolees, ex-convicts, women, Orang Asli and persons with disabilities.

- Bernama