June 2011 Employment Report

This report came out near two weeks ago, but I haven’t covered it yet. Not that we’re missing very much – hardly any “real” changes have occurred since May:

In absolute numbers, virtually nothing changed from May in terms of employment, the total labour force or the participation rate. The only thing of note is that unemployment rose by 20k people, which pushed the unemployment rate up to 3.2%:

The number of unemployed has breached the 400k level for only the second time since last June. But I’d say this is more a factor of high total labour force growth than a cyclical increase in unemployment – labour force growth is still plenty strong:

One other thing to note…at 3.2%, the unemployment rate is nearer Malaysia’s long term average, indicating (maybe) that there’s less of a chance that the labour market will be less of a constraint on growth. That’s good for domestic price stability – and bad for wage increases.

Technical Notes:

June 2011 Employment Report from the Department of Statistics (warning: pdf link)