Page 118 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 2

STS463 Noraliza M.A. et al.
in the number of employed persons i.e. the employment change is often
interpreted as jobs created and denotes as labour demand statistics. Since LFS
adopts household approach, the interpretation might provide the wrong
signal to the market and the overall economy. Similarly, when used to measure
graduate employability, the LFS might not offer the most accurate results since
it is not designed to cater for potential labour supply or track graduates across
the labour market.

4. Way forward for the labour supply statistics in Malaysia
LFS definitely has a special position as the source of labour supply in the
spectrum of labour market information. Nevertheless, as we move ahead
within the realm of demographic transition towards ageing population and
urbanised households on one hand, and the rapid technological change and
revolutionised world of work and economic landscape on another, there is a
pressing need to alter and improve the current method for production of
labour supply statistics.
Firstly, it is important to extend the coverage of the LFS’ sample to take
into account all population including those living in institutional LQs. Semi-
skilled employed persons within selected subsectors, especially non-citizens
in the agriculture and construction sectors often reside in communal houses.
Thus, this recommendation is to ensure a more comprehensive coverage, and
essentially increase the accuracy of the labour supply estimates in the market.
The later generation of respondents are technology savvy, value privacy
and non-intrusive. As far as the mode of data collection for LFS is concern, it
is timely that we transform towards a more respondent friendly self-
completion mode through drop-off and pick-up of questionnaire and e-
survey. In keeping with this modernization, the content of the questionnaire
should be reviewed and simplify where necessary to cater for the primary
objective of the LFS which is to determine the labour force status of the
population as either employed, unemployed, underemployed and outside
labour force.
Further than taking up surveys, it is high time that the national statistical
system ventures into a more strategic source i.e. administrative records. As
indicated by ILO (2017a), the nature of administrative records which is created
and maintained by the corresponding agency is an economical source with
real-time information and exhaustive coverage. UK leveraged the
administrative record of unemployment insurance since 1920s to complement
surveys and censuses data (Bean, 2018). MOM, Singapore and BLS, USA also
incorporate information from various sources to produce comprehensive
monthly updates on labour market situation. In this respect, Malaysia’s
Employment Insurance System (EIS) which took off contributions from
employees since January 2018 and offers insurance to retrenched employees

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