Chief statistician Uzir Mahidin said the number of employed persons continued its upward trend, marking a month-on-month increase of 0.1% to 16.53 million people, compared to 16.51 million the month before.

“On the contrary, the number of unemployed persons in March changed little to 566,600 persons, with a slight decline of 0.1% from February’s 567,000,” he said.

He said the unemployment rate during the month was unchanged at 3.3%.

In March, 75.1% of employed persons were in the employees’ category, marking an uptick of 0.1% to 12.42 million compared to 12.41 million in February.

“Similarly, a positive trend was observed in the category of own-account workers, which increased by 0.3% to 3.03 million persons,” Uzir said.

Of the total number of unemployed persons in March, 79.7% were available for work and actively seeking jobs, or actively unemployed, representing a 0.2% drop from the previous month.

In terms of duration of unemployment for the actively unemployed, 61.7% were unemployed for less than three months while 6.6% had been unemployed for more than a year.

Meanwhile, the number of inactively unemployed, or those who believed that there were no jobs available, rose by 0.4% to 115,000.

Uzir said the services sector continued to record a positive trend in the number of employed persons, particularly in the wholesale and retail trade, food and beverage, and information and communications sectors.

Likewise, the number of employed persons in the manufacturing, construction, mining and quarrying as well as agriculture sectors followed an increasing trend in March.

Penang recorded the lowest unemployment rate at 1.8% during the quarter, followed by Kedah (1.9%), Perlis (2%), Selangor (2%), and Putrajaya (2.1%).

Selangor recorded the highest labour force participation rate at 76.3%, followed by Kuala Lumpur (74.1%), Penang (73.4%), Putrajaya (72.9%) and Johor (71.3%).