A snapshot of Malaysia’s employer online recruitment activity for the month of May compiled by talent platform foundit (formerly Monster APAC & ME) show strong momentum and a promising future for the labour market.

The foundit Insights Tracker (fIT) revealed year-on-year growth of 8%. Additionally, a month-on-month analysis showed a 6% surge.

“It’s good to see the silver lining in Malaysia. The good news is it’s very organic and widespread. Almost all the industries are showing upwards trends both in a month-on-month and year-by-year basis,” said Sekhar Garisa, CEO of foundit (formerly Monster APAC & ME).

Sekhar believes the rising index values reveal a thriving labour market that will benefit employees and employers alike.

“I think there’s a reasonable balance between the job givers and the job takers, and that’s what we want to see. We’re entering a good period of balance,” said Sekhar.

The good news for employers is the job market is finally picking up again. Job demand has broadened by 4% in the last six months and many sectors have witnessed a significant increase in month-on-month analysis, something that Garisa says employers should jump on.

“What I've been advising the employers is, if you have plans of hiring, this is the right time to hire — don't wait for another quarter or two, and then realize that everybody else has started hiring.”

Breaking down jobs by industry

Thanks to Malaysia’s booming recovery in the tourism sector, hospitality leads all other industries in growth, recording the steepest annual growth with a whopping 102% more hiring activity.

Rising retail sales have been great for the retail sector who had the second largest year-on-year growth with an increase of 57%.

This is followed by robust year-on-year growth from the engineering construction and real estate industries where infrastructure developments, government policies, and rapid urbanisation plans of Malaysia helped the industry attain a 24% rise in hiring activity.

Other industries boasting an increase in year-on-year growth are production/manufacturing, automotive and ancillary (+2%), BFSI (+5%), advertising, market research, public relations, media and entertainment (+14%), and, logistic, courier/ freight/ transportation, shipping/ marine (+18%) - showcasing hiring optimism.

Not all good news for some sectors

However, challenging economic times and advancement in technology have hit the customer service industry hard, down 33% from May last year, the largest deceleration of all. Customer service declined on all the FIT monitored functions.

The foundit report cites two reasons for this: advancements in technology that have led to the implementation of automated customer service systems such as chatbots and self-service portals, and cost-cutting measures resulting in a decrease in customer service roles.

“Customer service is probably the most advanced in terms of where we see technology replacing humans so we will see a bit of that impact,” said Sekhar, adding, “We’re probably a few quarters from organisations being comfortable about replacing human capacity with machine capacity at a substantial scale.”

The economic slowdown and political uncertainties also led to reduced investments and a lower demand for services in the IT, telecom/ISP, and BPO/ITES along with oil and gas industries who recorded a substantial drop in hiring activity.