KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 24 ― Malaysia has yet to escape the "middle income trap” as the bottom 40 per cent of its wage-earners are hard-put to find jobs outside low-ranking government positions, Opposition lawmaker Ong Kian Ming asserted today.

Refuting last week’s pronouncement by Putrajaya’s efficiency unit Pemandu, the DAP MP for Serdang said his analysis of government data showed that only the top 20 to 30 per cent of workers earned lucrative income and high profits in the private sector, which had no trickle down effect to benefit the bottom 40 per cent who only had basic certificate-level academic qualifications.

"For the bottom 40 per cent, the struggle to get out of the middle income trap continues and many of them are still hoping to obtain the security of a public sector job which are becoming more and more scarce,” he said in a statement.

He further claimed the number of jobs in the civil service has been on the decline in recent years, from 46,503 jobs offered in 2011 to only 30,964 positions last year, citing data released by the Public Service Commission.

He added that the situation was made worse because even menial jobs in the private sector that had previously been undertaken by the bottom 40 per cent was now being filled by the foreign labour force.

"The only place where foreign labour cannot hold jobs is in the civil service, hence the high number of applications and also appointments at this level,” he said.

"This raises the question of what jobs the unsuccessful applications end up doing,” he added.

Pemandu CEO Datuk Seri Idris Jala reportedly declared on August 17 that Malaysia is no longer stuck in the middle income trap.

He was reported telling a public-private partnership roundtable discussion organised by Brickfields Asia College that Malaysia has successfully narrowed the gap between the World Bank's high income threshold and the country’s current income level to just 15 per cent in 2015, compared to 33 per cent in 2010.

Malaysia's national income per capita has grown from US$8,280 in 2010 to US$10,570 in 2015, while the World Bank's high income threshold has just been adjusted from US$12,276 in 2010 to US$12,475 in 2015.