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ASSESSMENT ON THE DEMAND OF MALAYSIA LABOUR MARKET USING

ONLINE JOB VACANCY DATA

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 BOX ARTICLE

ASSESSMENT ON THE DEMAND OF MALAYSIA LABOUR MARKET

USING ONLINE JOB VACANCY DATA
Mohd Firdaus bin Zaini¹, Maslina binti Mohd Basir², Munira Balkis binti Mohd Bakri³, Mohammad Zulfikri bin Omar⁴
1,2,3,4
Institute of Labour Market Information and Analysis, Department of Statistics, Malaysia

INTRODUCTION
The labour market in an economy exists whenever there is a demand for labour as a factor of production, and
the worker willingly supplies the labour to earn salaries and wages in return. By understanding the labour market
demands and trends; the type of jobs, skills, and education required by the firms can be identified and matched.
Otherwise, the unmet demand due to the lack of skills and knowledge for the particular occupation needs to be
managed by revising the current education syllabus and training curriculum, reskilling and upskilling the labour
forces, optimising the latent workforce, importing foreign labours, etc.

Changes in the demand for occupation and job mismatch came to the forefront when rapid industrialisation
and globalisation hit Malaysia in the early 1980s. The issues had been extended until today and exacerbated
by technology disruption and the COVID-19 pandemic. This imbalance in occupation structure may lead to the
labour market tightens and thus require further investigation.

One of the indicators usually used to measure the changes in labour demand over time is Job Vacancy. Despite
no international recommendations or guidelines relating to job vacancies statistics, it has been suggested that
it is fairly simple to develop a definition of a ‘vacant post’ that parallels the definition of an ‘unemployed person
(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2019). The concept and definition of the job vacancy is the unfilled job that is
ready to be filled; of which, the employer is actively seeking candidates, including advertising vacancies, issuing
notices and registering with employment agencies as well as conducting interviews to select candidates to fill in
the vacancies (Department of Statistics, Malaysia, 2021). Commonly, vacancies in organisations occur due to
company expansion or replacement for promotion, termination, resignation, demotion, and retirement (Maslina
et al., 2020). It could also be due to changes in the organisation structure, formation of a new entity, or changes
in the business processes.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Previously, many countries traditionally use an establishment survey to collect job vacancy information. However,
there are increasing interest in using innovative data sources and analytical methods to study the labour market
(D’Amuri and Marcucci, 2010; Askitas and Zimmermann, 2015). The development of big data had expanded the
way to collect job vacancy info via scraping on the job posting on recruitment portals and employer websites.

Numerous studies related to job vacancy have relied totally on web-based job vacancy advertisements. For
example, (Capiluppi & Baravalle, 2010) web crawled the job vacancy advertisements from the Monster.com
website, a leading private internet recruitment site, to study skills required of IT personnel in the UK using
content analysis. Meanwhile, Kuhn and Shen (2013) and Shen and Kuhn (2013) collected data from the
third-largest online job portal in China by using a web crawler in the study of gender recruitment discrimination and
the difficulties labour market integration of Chinese college-educated youth. Vannini et al. (2019) implementing
the big data process on the 75,546 online job post to study the Italian labour market. Also, researchers such as
Stefánik (2012), Tijdens et al. (2015), Lovaglio et al. (2018) and many others are also using big data to analyse
specific labour market issues. Recently, OECD (2020) is also using big data to collect the online job vacancies
in the five OECD countries, namely Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United
States, to analyse the impact of COVID-19 on the labour market.

METHODOLOGY FRAMEWORK AND DATA LIMITATION

The collection and analysis of job vacancies from the web is a challenging activity. For this study, the data
were acquired from the selected job portals through a big data process embedded in the Big Data Analytics:
Job Market Insights (BDA: JMI) of the Institute of Labour Market Information and Analysis (ILMIA). The overall
process of the BDA: JMI pipeline is shown in Exhibit 1a.

10 | MALAYSIAN ECONOMIC STATISTICS REVIEW - VOL. 4/2021

 Figure 1: The Big Data Analytics: Job Market Insights process pipeline
Exhibit 1a: The Big Data Analytics: Job Market Insights Process Pipeline

Variables Data Data Data Data

Identification Ingestion Engineering Quality Dissemination

Source: Department of Statistics, Malaysia

The variables identification phase identifies the goals, variables to be collected, and data sources needed.
The identified variables to be collected are job title, job description, tasks and responsibilities, the field of
studies, skills requirement, salary offered, type of contract, and employer details. The information is gathered
from four (4) popular job portals through the web crawling technique. The data are integrated and stored in
one database. Utilising machine learning, unstructured datasets are extracted, de-duplicated, cleansed and
classified to generate new information. Malaysia Standard Classification of Occupations (MASCO), Malaysia
Standard Industrial Classifications (MSIC), skill list and National Education Code (NEC) are among the standard
classification used in generating new information. Due to the complexity of the text sources, the Word2Vec
model is used to produce word embedding by turning it into a unique vector that can be added, subtracted, and
manipulated in other ways like a vector space. Then, the data were verified to ensure accuracy and data quality.
This process is also essential as it helps train the model and improve the model, i.e. text classifier accuracy.
Finally, the data will be translated into a readable format to create a graphical presentation using attractive and
interactive visual elements in a user-friendly format powered by Tableau.

The results from this study must be interpreted with caution due to the data limitation. As is often the case with
big data, although the report and information from BDA: JMI are comprehensive, these online job vacancies
do not represent the whole population of job vacancies in Malaysia. This study only collected from four popular
recruitment websites compared to the number of job portals available in Malaysia. There are also no reliable
sources that mandate registration of “Company Advertisement on Job Openings” to supplement the information.
Besides, MASCO 2020 Category 9 (Elementary Workers) is excluded from this report since the low-skilled
occupations are not widely advertised online. The occupation under MASCO 2020 category 0 (Army) is also
excluded due to the safety and insufficient information.

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS: ONLINE JOB VACANCIES

BDA: JMI reported 307,536 job vacancies advertised from the four selected job portals between July 2019
to September 2020. The highest number of job vacancies published online was recorded in October 2019,
while the lowest was recorded in June 2020, as depicted in Exhibit 1b. On average, 27,409 job vacancies
were advertised each month before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the volume of online job vacancies
posting showed a declining trend from January 2020, indicating the pandemic’s adverse impacts and its related
containment measures. In June 2020, job vacancies advertised online steeply shrunk as the number of online
job vacancies had reduced by over 78 per cent compared to the average before the pandemic crisis. A recovery
in the number of online job vacancies posting is observed in July 2020 and then stabilised until September
2020.

The OECD (2021) observed a similar trend in online job vacancies in the five OECD countries, namely Australia,
Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The volume of online job vacancies in all
five countries had fallen more than 50 per cent in May 2020, before a gradual recovery, but yet below the prior
pandemic level.
Figure 2: The Number of Online Job Vacancies Advertisment , from July 2019 to September 2020

Exhibit 1b: The Number of Online Job Vacancies Advertisement, July 2019 - September 2020
33,220

30,106

27,271
27,111
25,924

25,550

24,334

22,935
22,544

20,097
16,490

12,785

7,163

6,018

5,988

Jul Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun July Aug Sept
2019 2020

Source: Department of Statistics, Malaysia

MALAYSIAN ECONOMIC STATISTICS REVIEW - VOL. 4/2021 | 11

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The analysis of online job vacancies indicates that most of the employer demanded the professional category
worker. Based on Table 1a, 48.3 per cent of the total online job advertisement were ask for professionals
workers and followed by Managers and Technicians (15.3%) and Associate Professionals (13.4%) categories
workers. By ranking, the top five most popular job offered during the reference period are Advertising and
Marketing Professionals (MASCO: 2431), Accountants and Auditors (MASCO: 2411), Managing Directors
and Chief Executives (MASCO: 1121), Administrative Associate Professionals (MASCO: 3341) and Software
Developers (MASCO: 2512).
Table 1a: The Number and Share of Online Job Vacancies Advertisement by
Table 1a: The Number and Share of Online Job Occupational
VacanciesCategoryAdvertisement by Occupational Category
MASCO Share
Major Group Frequency
Group (%)

1 Managers 47,093 15.3

2 Professionals 148,397 48.3

3 Technicians and Associate Professionals 41,250 13.4

4 Clerical Support Workers 17,570 5.7

5 Service and Sales Workers 18,012 5.9

Skilled Agricultural, Forestry, Livestock, and Fishery

6 263 0.1
Workers

7 Craft and Related Trades Workers 3,498 1.1

8 Plant and Machine Operators and Assemblers 5,885 1.9

- Unclassified 25,568 8.3

Source: Department of Statistics, Malaysia

As the backbone of Malaysia economy and employment, the Services sector provides the most extensive job
opportunities for the labour forces, followed by the Manufacturing and Construction sectors with a share of
73.6 per cent, 15.9 per cent and 1.4 per cent, respectively (Table 1b). In the Services sector, a rosy number
of online job vacancies was mainly contributed by the Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles &
motorcycles, the Professional, scientific & technical, the Accommodation & foodservice and the Financial &
Insurance activities.

It is worth noting that the high staff turnover might also cause the high number of job vacancies in the certain
sub-sectors. According to the National Employment Returns 2019 report, more than 60 per cent of vacancies
in these two sub-sectors, the Wholesale and retail trade; repair motor vehicles & motorcycles and the
Accommodation & food service, were due to replacement. The report also highlights that the Accommodation
and food service sub-sector had the highest staff turnover rate in 2019 at 45 per cent, followed closely behind
by the Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles & motorcycles at 29 per cent.
Table 2a: The Number and Share of Online Job Vacancies Advertisement by
Table 1b: The NumberEconomic Sector, the Share of GDP and Employment
and Share of Online Job Vacancies Advertisement,
the Share of GDP and Employment by Economic Sector
Online Job Vacancies Share of 2020 Share of
GDP at Constant Employment
Economic Sector
2015 Prices (as at Q4 2020)
Share
Frequency (%) (%)
(%)

Agriculture 784 0.3 7.4 12.2

Manufacturing 48,785 15.9 23.0 17.0

Mining & Quarrying 407 0.1 6.8 0.5

Construction 4,372 1.4 4.0 9.3

Services 226,471 73.6 57.7 61.0

Unclassified 26,717 8.7 - -

Source: Department of Statistics, Malaysia

In tandem with the composition of online job vacancies posting by occupational categories, which concentrated
on skilled workers, most employers demand higher education labour to fill the vacancies. 43.9 per cent of online
job vacancies seek candidates with a degree qualification, while 32.3 per cent prefer a diploma qualification,
as depicted in Table 1c. Only 12.9 per cent of the online job posting require a lower education level. The data
also showed that the most commonly mentioned skillset in the online job advertisement by the employer are
language, sales & marketing skills, communication skills, higher management skills, computer or IT skillset and
problem-solving.

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 Table 3a: The Number and Share of Online Job Vacancies Advertisement by
Table 1c: The Number and Share of Online Job Vacancies Advertisement by Education Level
Economic Sector, the Share of GDP and Employment
and The List of Main Skill Requirement
Education Education Level Share Skill Requirements
Group (%)
PhD 0.3  Language (English, Malay &
Mandarin)
Master 3.2
 Sales & Marketing Skills
Higher Degree 43.9
Education
Advance Diploma 0.2  Communication Skills

Diploma 32.3  Higher Management Skills

Certificate/ Skills Certificate 7.1

 Computer or Information &
Technology Skillset
STPM/STAM/HSC/A-Level 3.4
 Problem-Solving
Secondary Matriculation / Foundation 0.02
Education
SPM/SPMV/MCE/O-Level 9.4

PMR/LCE/SRP 0.1

Primary Primary Education/ No formal

0.01
Education Education/ Others

Source: Department of Statistics, Malaysia

On distributing online job vacancies posting by states, WP Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Johor are the top 3
states. With the only exception of unclassified data, these three states represent more than 70 per cent of the
total online job vacancies posting, as shown in Exhibit 1c.
Figure 3: The Share of Online Job Vacancies Advertisement by States

Exhibit 1c: The Share of Online Job Vacancies Advertisement by States

Kedah
3.1% Kelantan
2.8%
Perlis
0.5% Terengganu
0.7%
Sabah
Pulau Pinang W.P. Labuan 1.4%
7.4% 0.5%
Perak
3.3%
Pahang
1.4%
Selangor
27.1% Negeri Sembilan
W.P. Kuala Lumpur 2.1%
34.1%
Johor Sarawak
10.8% 1.7%
W.P. Putrajaya
0.7%
Melaka
2.4%

Source: Department of Statistics, Malaysia

CONCLUSION
Understanding the labour market demands and trends is essential to ensure labour market equilibrium. One of
the indicators used in analysing the labour market demand is based on Job Vacancies. Despite depending on
the survey, this study gathers the online job vacancies posting from the selected job portals through a big data
process embedded in the Big Data Analytics: Job Market Insights of the Institute of Labour Market Information
and Analysis.

Through the big data process, important information of labour market demand such as job title, job description,
task and responsibilities, studies, skills requirement, salary offered, type of contract, and employer details
are collected. From July 2019 to September 2020, 307,536 job vacancies advertisement were collected and
analysed. The record showed that most of the job vacancy posted in the four job portals is high skill jobs, i.e.
professionals, managers and technicians, and associate professionals. Many online vacancies are available for
the Services and Manufacturing sectors and are concentrated in 3 major states, namely W.P. Kuala Lumpur,
Selangor and Johor. Parallel to the online job vacancy statistics by occupation category, the result shows that
most employers demand higher education labour, i.e. degree and diploma qualification, to fill the vacancies.
By analysing the underlying skills mentioned in job postings, the result shows a strong demand for language
proficiency, sales and marketing skills, and good communication skills.

MALAYSIAN ECONOMIC STATISTICS REVIEW - VOL. 4/2021 | 13

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