KUALA LUMPUR, June 1 — Malaysia’s retail industry suffered the steepest decline in online recruitment across the year as hiring activity fell 11 per cent between last month and April 2016, an index gauging online job posting activities revealed.
According to the Monster Employment Index (MEI) for Malaysia by online employment firm Monster.com, the online hiring for the retail industry had fallen by 36 per cent, while customer service was the worst hit occupation with a decline in recruitment of 60 per cent.
“While fluctuations in the Malaysian labour market persist, it is pertinent for businesses to devise a talent strategy that minimises the skills mismatch between that of fresh graduates and what industry requires currently.
“The global workforce is in a constant flux and it is vital for the government, industry and educational institutions to work in sync and support workers in mid-careers to upskill,” Sanjay Modi, the managing director of Monster.com for Asia-Pacific and Middle East, said in a statement yesterday.
The online hiring for information technology (IT), telecommunications, internet service provider, business process outsourcing and IT enabled service industry grew the most at 12 per cent year-to-year, followed by oil and gas at 11 per cent.
The occupation with highest growing online hiring was sales and business development at 9 per cent, followed by software, hardware and telecommunications at 7 per cent.
In comparison, the next worst hit industry after retail was hospitality which fell by 20 per cent. Similarly, hospitality and travel was the second worst hit occupation with a 39 per cent decline.
Other industry declining in online hiring were the advertising, market research, public relations, media and entertainment sector, and the engineering, construction and real estate sector.
Launched in May 205, the MEI is a monthly gauge of online job posting activity, based on a real-time review of millions of employer job opportunities, culled from a large representative selection of career websites and online job listings across Malaysia.
According to Monster, the Index does not reflect the trend of any one advertiser or source, but is an aggregate measure of the change in job listings across the industry.
