ISSUE: FRESH GRADUATES COMPETING WITH RETRENCHED WORKER FOR

A LIMITED JOB OPPORTUNITIES

POINT: IMPACT OF THE ISSUE TO SOCIETY

Decrease in unemployment

As stated in the article, the percentage of participation in labor has increased compared to the
past pandemic, which was at 69% in January 2022. This indicates that the issue of
unemployment in Malaysia has dropped since the country has moved towards endemicity.
This was also stated by Chief Statistics Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin who said the number
of employed people had increased by 2.2% compared to the same quarter last year. This is
probably because of the pandemic that has caused many workers to be terminated, now that
the economy is in recovery phase, the retrenched workers started to look for a job that suits
them, thus making them compete with fresh graduates for limited job opportunities.
Furthermore, as both fresh graduates and retrenched workers are actively participating in
labor, the job vacancies have doubled to over 508,000 positions in June 2022 compared to the
same period last year which is only 258,000 positions. The increases in job application have
open up more job opportunities by businesses and industries especially in services sector such
as Grab food, Grabcar, Foodpanda, and Shoppefood that open a wide range of job vacancies
for either fresh graduates or retrenched workers as this job field does not need specific job
requirement. many businesses its open up more job opportunities service businesses such as
Grab food, Grabcar, Foodpanda, and Shoppefood are now offered widely and do not require
specific job requirements. Therefore, most graduates and some retrenched workers prefer
these part-time jobs to earn more income to help their families financially and as a
preparation to further their studies. Therefore, this issue of competition between fresh
graduates and retrenched worker gives a positive impact on society as it decreases the
unemployment issue in Malaysia because of an increase in job applications.

Standard of living

Standard of living depends on how fast the productivity growth of the country. Therefore,
productive workers are important in organization to ensure that organization are able to
maintain its growth for the society better standard of living. Recruiting retrenched worker
will help the organization to generate better profits as they are more productive in their work
compared to fresh graduates. This is because they have developed past experience or unique
skills from their previous company that will help to motivate the workplace culture and boost
morale and producing an even better company environment. Retrenched workers’ knowledge
of prerequisite tasks and interdependencies may allow their performance to grow at a faster
rate than fresh graduates, over time which can contribute to the wellbeing of the company’s
daily operations. Faster productivity growth will lead to an increasingly better standard of
living and higher productivity will increases wages. Meanwhile, fresh graduates are prone to
be disengaged in their work which will lead to lower productivity, decreased morale, higher
absenteeism, poor customer service, increased safety incidents, and as a result it will take a
swipe at company profits. When there is lower in productivity, the standard of living will be
at the lower level too as businesses are unable to generate profits due to low production of
goods and services. Therefore, hiring fresh graduates will slow down your company growth
as they are not actively engaged in company activities and thus will lead to decreases in
annual income.

Compared to fresh graduates, retrenched workers are more productive because they have
developed past experience or unique skills from their previous company. This will help to
motivate the workplace culture and boost morale and producing an even better company
environment. Retrenched workers’ knowledge of prerequisite tasks and interdependencies
may allow their performance to grow at a faster rate than fresh graduates, over time which
can contribute to the wellbeing of the company’s daily operations. Faster productivity growth
will lead to an increasingly better standard of living and higher productivity will increases
wages.