Purchasing power stifled by labour market distortions

Malaysia’s total labour force stands at almost 14 million, with 10 of it in the civil service, 5 to 7 in GLCs and the balance disproportionally being in large family-owned enterprises, small family-owned enterprises and the self-employed.

IT’S not about Malaysians not wanting to take up 3D (dirty, dangerous and demeaning) jobs, neither is it due to Malaysia’s graduates being picky and uninterested in certain sectors and jobs. The other usual argument put forth has been the mismatch of skills, expectations, attitude as well as lack of proficiency in the English language. But what truly ails the Malaysian labour force is two significant elements.

The absence of a platform for “in pursuit of happyness” (with a y and not i) and the absence of “equal opportunity employers”. The latter while is debatable and controversial in the context of Malaysia but the fact of the matter is if Japan’s Nissan and France’s Renault has Brazilian-born Carlos Ghosn as its CEO, Indian-born American, Satya Nadella as the CEO of Microsoft, Rajeev Suri as Nokia’s CEO and Piyush Gupta as CEO of DBS, it tells us that what ails Malaysia’s labour market is; it lacks dynamism in allowing labour market efficiency to fully work its way through, in other words it is not able to integrate into global labour market conditions. Every international firm with global standing subscribes to the equal opportunity employer notion, fully or at least partially and it’s stated clearly in their websites and brochures.