KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 8 — The number of unemployed people in the country grew to 760,700 or 4.8 per cent in the last quarter of 2020, according to data from the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) released today.

The marginal increase is recorded as only 0.1 per cent from the 4.7 per cent in the third quarter of last year, which registered 745,000 as unemployed.

But translated into layman’s terms, it means a staggering 15,700 people lost their jobs in only three months back when the government had allowed nearly all sectors of the economy to reopen.

Today’s Q420 DOSM data also indicated that the demographic group where unemployment was highest were those aged between 15 and 24. The number totalled 328,000 people.

The next largest age demographic group was those between 25 to 34 years old at 260,100, followed by those aged between 35 to 44 (76,200 people) and those aged 45 and above (96,400 people).

However, DOSM also found that the labour supply gradually improved in Q420 where labour force continued to increase by 0.5 per cent or 81,700 persons quarter-on-quarter.

That means that there were 15.92 million people who still had jobs as at Q420 compared to 15.10 million in July-September last year.

The labour force participation rate also improved by 0.1 per cent in Q420 to 68.5 per cent from 68.4 per cent in the previous quarter.

According to DOSM data, those who were self-employed were the most affected workwise during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The percentage share of own-account workers fell by 0.7 percentage points to record 2.44 million persons (Q320 2.53 million people).

Those who were in the labour force as employees comprised 11.7 million people. This percentage saw an 0.8 percentage points rise to 77.2 per cent compared to the previous quarter which registered 11.53 million people (76.4 per cent).

The number of employed skilled workers also increased by 168,800 people to 4.56 million in Q420 from 4.39 million the third quarter.

Correspondingly, the number of low-skilled workers dropped to 1.74 million people in Q420 from 1.87 million in Q320.