PETALING JAYA: Malaysia registered nine straight months of decline in overall online recruitment activity, down 5% year-on-year in November 2018, according to the latest Monster Employment Index (MEI).
The MEI is a gauge of online job posting activities compiled monthly by Monster.com. It records the industries and occupations that show the highest and lowest growth in recruitment activity locally.
The index noted that the banking, financial services and insurance industry, which has been on a plunge since January, recorded double-digit decline in November at 12% year-on-year.
“According to research houses, macro policy uncertainty post-GE14 seems to be having a slight dampening effect on the banking’s sector growth, and analysts also expects the sector’s core earnings growth to come in lower this year,” Monster.com (Asia Pacific and Middle East) CEO Abhijeet Mukherjee said.
Finance and accounts job roles also saw the most-notable annual decline among occupation categories, down 10% year-on-year, which marks the ninth consecutive month of decline for the role.
Meanwhile, the IT, telecom/internet service provider, business process outsourcing/IT-enabled services and oil & gas industries were yet again the only two out of the nine industries monitored by the index that exhibited growth, up 28% and 16% year-on-year, respectively.
On a six month-basis, both sectors also recorded strong growth, up 35% and 16% respectively.
Among occupation categories, customer service roles registered the most notable growth in November, up 6% year-on-year, followed by software, hardware and telecom professionals, up 3%.
Demand for sales and business development professionals was also on the nine-month, double-digit decline wagon as well, down 10% year-on-year in November.
The MEI is based on a real-time review of millions of employer job opportunities culled from a large representative selection of career websites and online job listings across Malaysia.
The index does not reflect the trend of any one advertiser or source, but is an aggregate measure of the change in job listings across the industry.
