Job seekers had tough time with fewer hires in 2013, report shows

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 16 — Listening to the talk among business owners this past year, you’d think it was an employees’ market as bosses griped about how hard it was to retain their staff. 

As it turns out, Malaysians had a harder time looking for jobs this year as employers hired fewer people in the face of rising labour costs, a JobStreet report showed.

Based on the online recruitment agency’s Job Outlook Report 2013, the number of employers who think the prospect for job growth was better than the previous year fell from 40 per cent last year to 34 per cent this year.

But despite the six-point drop in employers’ confidence in job growth, JobStreet.com said a “healthy” figure of around 20,000 job vacancies was recorded each day on its website for the whole of 2013.

JobStreet.com attributed the lower hiring rate by employers this year to uncertain economic conditions and Putrajaya’s new policies — including the stretching of the minimum retirement age for the private sector to 60 and the minimum wage of RM900 in Peninsula Malaysia and RM800 in East Malaysia.

As an example, it cited an employer in the manufacturing industry as saying: “We did not hire more staff due to retirement age extension.”

“Minimum wages have increased our costs hence we cannot afford to hire more employees,” an unnamed hospitality industry company was quoted as saying in JobStreet.com press release today.

But JobStreet.Com also said that good talents were in high demand in 2013, citing an employer who said that such job seekers would not lack job opportunities even when the economy is bad.

The Top 10 specialisations for 2013 remained largely the same as last year’s except for the rankings of job skills, while Finance and Banking toppled Human Resources and edged into the Top 10 list, JobStreet.Com said.

It said those in Sales were at the top of the list of job skills sought after by employers, followed by Accounting, Secretarial & Administration, ICT and Marketing.

The Job Outlook Report was based on JobStreet.com’s nationwide quarterly surveys of employers’ sentiments.