Speaking in the wake of Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s comments on graduates forced to drive Uber or sell nasi lemak to earn a living, the Damansara Utama assemblywoman said youth unemployment was a serious issue in Malaysia.
In a statement today, she said World Bank statistics showed that one in four graduates remained jobless six months after graduation.
“The rate of growth in high-skill jobs is not keeping up with the rate of increase of our increasingly tertiary educated workforce,” she said.
From 2001 to 2015, she said, the percentage of total employment for low-skill jobs had risen from 10.6% to 13.8%. Employment for high-skill jobs, on the other hand, increased only from 24.3% to 25.5%.
“It shows clearly that our economy has created low-skill jobs at a faster rate than high-skill jobs and we are facing a hollowing of mid-skill jobs.”
Apart from unemployment, Yeo said, underemployment, or the mismatch between graduates’ qualifications and their jobs, was also a problem.
“Many young graduates today are in jobs that don’t match their qualifications and aspirations and being paid at such.
“The country is spending its limited resources on funding tertiary education institutions only for graduates to come out to work for very low salaries.”
She said although individual hard work and initiative would also determine income levels, the government needed to correct these systemic and structural flaws.
“Khairy and the politicians from Barisan Nasional should not hide their heads in the sand and pretend that everything is well and fine while our young people are losing opportunities to fulfil their aspirations through having better and decent-paying jobs,” she said.
She was referring to Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin, who said on Monday that there was nothing wrong with graduates driving Uber or selling nasi lemak.
This followed Mahathir’s remarks on Jan 17 that the rising number of graduates who are not doing what they are academically trained for was a testament of the government’s failure to create more job opportunities.
Mahathir not impressed by graduates becoming Uber drivers, nasi lemak sellers