Chief Statistician Mohd Uzir Mahidin said the “actively unemployed” made up more than 80% of the total unemployed persons. This decreased by 1.3% from 626,000 individuals in March to 618,700 in April.

“Out of the total ‘actively unemployed’, 52.1% had been unemployed for less than three months,” he said in a statement today.

He said there was a month-on-month increase in those employed, with 22,700 people joining the workforce. A total of 15.35 million were working in April compared with 15.33 million in March.

The services industry recorded an upward trend in employees, mostly in the wholesale and retail trade; food and beverages; education; and human health and social work sectors.

The manufacturing and construction sectors saw some increase in workers but the agriculture as well as the mining and quarrying sectors continued to see a decline in employment.

Those working for others accounted for 77.9% of those employed, increasing by 17,200 people month-on-month to register 11.96 million (March 2021: 11.95 million).

Own-account workers registered an increase of 12,300 to record 2.49 million in April (March 2021: 2.48 million). This increase followed the opening of small businesses.

“The number of those employed temporarily not working continued to decline, recording 116,000 compared to 121,000 in March.”

Uzir expected the total lockdown imposed this month to affect the labour market for the next few months.