IN Malaysia, it is easier to get a job without a university degree than it is to get one as a graduate.
Myra, 29, knows this struggle all too well. Like many graduates, she
finds getting a job with decent pay in Kuala Lumpur a serious challenge
and one with serious risks to her physical and mental wellbeing.
Animated, sharp and with a strong command of English, Myra holds a
Masters from the University of Brighton, sponsored by a scholarship she
won from a local organisation.
Yet, in all her eight years of working in Malaysia, she’s never been
able to get a job that pays her more than RM3,600 (RM1 = US$0.25) a
month despite her postgraduate qualification and years of experience.
None of the jobs she’s managed to land are meeting her needs. After
quitting a 50-hours-a-week job that paid her RM3,500 per month, she’s
now freelancing, earning between RM1,000 to RM2,000 per month. It’s
barely enough for her to survive in Kuala Lumpur.
“It is totally unacceptable that our Prime Minister says we can live on these wages,” she said.
Cost of living, from food to transport, is the main source of concern among Malaysian youth. Source: Mohd Rasfan/AFP
These are tough times for
graduates in Malaysia. Many, like Myra, earn below the relative poverty
line in the city, despite holding degrees. Even a foreign degree like
Myra’s, once coveted and sought after, is no longer a guaranteed path to
a well-paying job.
In Malaysia, that means anything that pays at least RM2,700, the living wage recommended by Malaysia’s Central Bank. This ‘living wage’ figure is the income level needed for a single adult to achieve a minimum acceptable standard of living in Kuala Lumpur.
More than half of Malaysia’s graduates, however, are paid a monthly wage of RM2,000 or less.
For Myra, her underemployment is
having a “crazy impact” on her quality of life. Her single mother lives
in another state, so the option of moving back home and not paying rent
is not possible. Her health has gone downhill as she neither has the
time nor money to eat or prepare healthy food.
She says she’s been hospitalised twice from overwork. It has not been easy. “Is this the type of life I want to have? With no time for my friends and my health going down the drain?” she said.
What happened to the Malaysian
government’s promise to create 3.3 million jobs? According to Prime
Minister Najib Razak, the nation added as many as 2.26 million jobs since 2013.
The economy is booming too, he
says, with low inflation and the average household income growing at
more than 6 percent each year. Last year, government revenue hit RM220.4 billion.
These figures appear to show a
prosperous Malaysia where its citizens are high income-earners with the
ability to afford comfortable lives and seek satisfying careers.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak of the ruling coalition party
Barisan Nasional (C) listens to his supporters during a campaign event
ahead of the upcoming 14th general elections, in Pekan, Pahang on May 6,
2018. Malaysia’s 14th general election will be held on May 9. Source:
Mohd Rasfan / AFP
They appear to portray a country
where its cream of the crop, especially the ones toting foreign degrees,
have their pick of any job they want to fulfill their potential.
But under-reported jobs numbers shatter this mirage of a prosperous country. Of the millions of jobs created, only 23.5 percent are
high-skilled positions suitable for university graduates. Unemployment
is higher among youth with tertiary qualification than those without.
Overall, there are three times more(10.7 percent) jobless youth than the national average (3.1 percent).
For those with jobs, nearly two-thirds (65.2 percent) of
graduates are poor. Like Myra, the majority of them earn several
hundreds of ringgit below the minimum income level to afford them an
acceptable standard of living in the city.
And wages are stagnant. Last year,
wages went up by RM17 on average after deducting inflation. That’s the
price of one latte at Starbucks.
There is a mental health cost to
all this. Kenny Lim of Befrienders KL, a non-profit providing mental
health support said his centre has been receiving calls from distressed
graduates struggling to find jobs.
“It can make a person feel very
insecure and anxious, not knowing how the future is going to be, how
long more does it take before finding a job or a good-paying job,” Lim
said.
Pressure comes from their feelings
of being unable to repay their parents and loans, support their
families or meet their commitments.
It doesn’t help that society labels them as “lazy” or “useless” either, he added.
It’s true graduate attitude get a lot of flak. The millennial generation
is lazy, pampered and entitled, the accusations go. If “kids these
days” would just be more dilligent and industrious, they can easily land
jobs and climb the career ladder, employers and government officials
say.
Lim believes RM2,000 for a degree-holder is a good base salary to start. Source: Instagram/Desmond Lim
But consider the situation of 24-year-old Desmond Lee. Lee is a law
graduate from the University of Leeds and has been admitted to the
English bar as a barrister. He has an enviable string of internships
under his belt at these places: one each at a Malaysian law firm,
political party and investment bank; and one at the anti-money
laundering department of an Emirati bank’s London office.
He returned to Malaysia to train to be an advocate and solicitor at a
top law firm in Kuala Lumpur. From Monday to Friday, he spends an
average of 12 hours in office and frequently clocks out at midnight or
later.
For this, he is paid a monthly salary of RM2,500, a figure he describes
as “justifiable” though he would welcome a higher amount “considering
the long hours required for this job”.
Employers see this figure as fair too, citing fresh graduates’ lack of
experience and employable skills as factors that justify this amount.
Indeed, employers have considered paying less than RM3,000 a month to
fresh graduates as fair for two decades now.
And it doesn’t look like that is about to change anytime soon. The
Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) recently said it is “unrealistic”
to pay employees more at this stage as companies are “bogged down by
escalating costs”.
“However, if the workers are proactive and upskill themselves to
increase their productivity, then I do not see any reason for employers
to refrain from offering higher pay packages,” Shamsuddin Bardan, MEF’s
executive director said to local daily The Star.
The 2014 Labour Force Survey show more than 1.1 million of the 3.5
million tertiary-educated workers are are employed in mid or low-skill
occupations that did not require an education level beyond that of
high-school. Source: Penang Institute
What the data, government or otherwise,
shows is a worrying mismatch between job qualifications and type of
available jobs – the number of high-skilled jobs just has not kept pace
with the number of graduates entering the workforce.
It’s caused Atikah, a recent graduate from a local university, to sell murtabaks – a type of local stuffed pancake – for a living instead fulfilling the potential of her design degree.
To make ends meet, Atikah wakes up
at 5am everyday to make around 200 murtabaks to sell at morning markets
around the city. In the evening, she scours supermarkets to find
discounts for the ingredients. Things are going up everywhere, she
says.
By many measures, Atikah and the
other workers forced to drive Ubers as a second job for more income, or
the engineering graduates relegated to selling nasi lemak in makeshift
stalls, deserve praise. They show tenacity and their can-do spirit is
obvious. Yet, their qualifications and virtues appear to hold any value
in Malaysia today.
When asked what she feels about this, Atikah sums it up in three words: “Yeah, it’s hard.”
IN Malaysia, it is easier to get a job without a university degree than it is to get one as a graduate.
