Page 84 - Contributed Paper Session (CPS) - Volume 7

CPS2035 Noor Ismawati et al.
(Jordaan, 2018). Despite the highly perceived negative connotation in the
country’s foreign worker depency, Jordaan(2018), Nurˋain Achim et al. (2017)
and Ramesh Kumar Moona Haji Mohamed et al. (2012) highlighted the
concentration of them in few specific industries.
Effective from Jannuary 2013, the Malaysian Government enforced the
Minimum Wages Order (MWO). The wage was set at a minimum of MYR900
in Peninsular Malaysia and MYR800 in East Malaysia. However, these wages is
not applicable to domestic workers. The amounts were increased into
MYR1000 and MYR920 starting from July 2016, respectively (Malaysia, 2016).
This government intervention in earning by introducing minimum wage is
widely perceived to cause a negative impact in the economy as it increase the
labour cost.. Hence this paper presents the labour distribution of the local and
foreign workers by industry and its earning pattern.. The analysis only consider
primary occupation and does not include annualised monetary benefit.
Analysis is done on selected years and industries. The analysis does not
differentiate the employees by their skill level.

2. Methodology
Salaries & Wages Survey (SWS) is one of the modules in the Labour Force
Survey which is carried out from January until December based on guidelines
and recommendations of the International Labour Organization (ILO) with
reference to An Integrated System of Wages Statistics. SWS main objective is
to obtain the wage rate from the principal occupation through household
approach collected from respondents aged 15 years and over and fulfil at least
one of the following criteria; i. Employees who are working full-time; ii.
Employees who did not work during the reference month but receiving salaries
& wages and will definitely be called for work; iii. Working for at least 6 hours
a day or at least 20 days a month for the usual occupation done every month;
iv. Contract workers in the government sector; v. Individuals who receive
regular and periodic allowances every month; and vi. Volunteers who receive
fixed allowance. Wage rates information consisting of basic wages, cost-of-
living allowances and other guaranteed and regularly paid allowances in cash
or in kind and overtime payment. However, it excludes bonuses and gratuities,
family allowances and social security payments made by employers. Principal
occupation is defined as job with the longest number of hours or highest paid
or longest period during the reference week if the person having more than
one job.
Descriptive statistics is mainly applied in the paper. Three variables studied
in the paper are industry, citizenship and earning. Industry is classified
according to the The Malaysian Standard Industrial Classification (MSIC) 2008
based on the International Standard Industrial Classification of all Economic
Activities (ISIC) Revision 4. MSIC divisions is done in 21 groups. The analysis

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