KUALA LUMPUR, June 29 ― Malaysian firms' online recruitment has contracted for yet another month despite the oil-and-gas sector enjoying registering a 16-per cent growth in hiring, according to Monster.com.
In its monthly Monster Employment Index (MEI), overall online hiring in May fell 14 per cent from the same time last year.
Past index records show that April and March online recruitment figures both suffered a 11 per cent year-on-year decline, with no expansion in February and a mere 2-per cent growth in January.
With its hiring in May, the oil-and-gas industry emerged as the best-performing sector “for the first time ever”, the company said.
“Despite the bleak overall e-recruitment numbers, analysts are upbeat about Malaysia’s economic growth, which has exhibited a fairly healthy growth trend, especially in select sectors such as Oil and Gas.
“This sector has done particularly well this month as businesses look to outsource operations here to reduce outgoing expenses,” Sanjay Modi, managing director of Monster.com for Asia Pacific and Middle East, said in a statement today.
The other industries that performed well were information technology (IT), telecommunications, internet service providers, business process outsourcing and IT enabled service industry, production/manufacturing, and the automotive and ancillary sectors.
The IT-related sector previously experienced the strongest growth in online hiring for the first four months this year, while the oil-and-gas industry was second worst in January (-13 per cent), fourth-worst in February (-3 per cent) and second-best in April (11 per cent).
The retail industry remained the worst-performing sector in terms of online hiring with an annual decline of 35 per cent for May.
Retail was also the industry with highest year-on-year decline in online hiring in April (-36 per cent), March (-36 per cent), February (-22 per cent). Retail shared the spot of second-lowest growth in online hiring in January with oil and gas where both suffered a decline of 13 per cent, while the hospitality sector then was the worst performer with a 19 per cent drop.
Like April, other industries that fared badly for online hiring in May were hospitality (-23 per cent), advertising, market research, public relations, media and entertainment sector (-18 per cent), and the engineering, construction and real estate sector (-12 per cent).
“Other ongoing factors such as the recent inflation has led to a hike in cost of living and a dip in consumer spending, resulting in a decline in hiring in the Retail sectors and its corresponding roles,” Sanjay said.
As for specific jobs, sales and business development roles are the most in-demand jobs for the second consecutive month with a nine per cent annual growth in online hiring.
Customer service continued to be the least in-demand with a sharp 64 per cent annual decline in online hiring in May. It was also the worst performer in the first four months of this year with an annual decline by 60 per cent (April), 58 per cent (March), 55 per cent (February), 52 per cent (January).
As in March and April, other jobs with the greatest annual fall in online hiring for May are hospitality and travel (-48 per cent), finance and accounts (-14 per cent) and human resource and administration (-13 per cent).
Monster.com says MEI, which was launched in May 2015, tracks online job posting activity based on a real-time review of millions of job opportunities that are culled from a large representative selection of career websites and online job listings across Malaysia.
