Page 110 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 2

STS463 Noraliza M.A. et al.

Labour supply statistics: Challenges and way
forward
Noraliza Mohamad Ali, Nur Layali Mohd Ali Khan
Department of Statistics Malaysia

Abstract
From the perspective of labour supply, Labour Force Survey (LFS) has been
conducted in Malaysia since 1972 to cover selected regions in the country.
Since 1982, the coverage has been extended to produce national annual
estimates of labour force statistics. With economic and social developments
and transitions nationally and globally, the frequency and disaggregation was
further improved to quarterly and later monthly estimates at national and state
levels. Ever since the inceptions of the LFS, concepts, definitions and
classifications has been reviewed and adopted accordingly with the
recommendations of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and best
practices of other National Statistical Offices. Considering the frequency of
disseminations of LFS statistics, at times, the information has been overly
utilised and has been the subject of misinterpretation when used as a
replacement or proxies to other unavailable labour market the statistics of
labour supply through household approach to cater and complement the
other dimensions of labour market statistics.

Keywords
Labour Force Survey; Labour statistics; Labour market information; Labour
market dynamics

1. Introduction
Sound evidence-based policy making relies on comprehensive
demographic, economic and social statistics. As much as the well-being of an
economy is evaluated through the shift in the population structure and
changes of the social landscape, labour plays an important part in
understanding the world of work, such as the relationship between
employment and growth, wage formation, the importance of human capital,
migration and labour market regulations (ILO, 2013). Bean (2018),
International Labour Organisation (ILO) (2017a) and KPMG Economics (2016)
perceived labour statistics as the fundamental fragment of any labour market
information system which is in turn very critical for research and policy
formulation.
ILO (2017a) defined labour statistics as groups of official statistics relating
to work, productive activities, workers, the characteristics of the labour market

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