Malaysia's August jobless rate rises to 3.1%

KUALA LUMPUR: The unemployment rate in the country increased marginally to 3.1% in August from 3.0 % in July, while it was 2.7 % in August 2012, the Statistics Department said.

However, the number of unemployed people in August rose by 20,600 persons or 4.9 percentage points to 441,800 persons, while the number of employed people showed positive growth with an increase of 173,300 (1.3 %) to 13.67 million people compared to July, it said.