KUALA LUMPUR (March 29): Malaysia's online recruitment activities in the banking and finance sectors experienced another slump in February 2016, declining 38% year-over-year (y-o-y), as economic growth remain slow.

Malaysia continued to fare the worst amongst the three markets, which includes the Philippines and Singapore, monitored by the latest Monster Employment Index (MEI).

The index, which measures online job hiring activity monthly, recording the industries and occupations that show the highest and lowest growth in recruitment activity in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines for February 2016, highlighted that Southeast Asia's demand for banking and finance professionals saw negative growth.

Among the region, Malaysia witnessed 39% y-o-y decline in online hiring in February, a whopping 20 percentage point drop from the 18% y-o-y decline registered in January.

"None of the industry sectors and occupational groups registered positive annual growth," the report indicated.

The production or manufacturing, automotive and ancillary sector reported the least decline at 10% y-o-y, while the logistic, courier/freight/transportation, shipping/marine sector continued to record the steepest y-o-y decline at 56%.

Marketing and communications professionals once again saw the least decline, registering a 10% y-o-y dip; while the software, hardware, telecom roles had the least demand at 73% y-o-y.

Online demand for customer service professionals reported the steepest growth at 9% y-o-y, while hospitality and travel professionals experienced the weakest demand at -76%.

Other regions, such as Singapore, exhibited 4% decline in online hiring in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector, down from 0% reported between January 2015 and 2016. This puts the sector among the lowest growth industries in the market.

Meanwhile, the Philippines was the only market to exhibit positive annual growth in the BFSI sector, reporting 1% y-o-y growth.

This is a 12 percentage point drop from the 13% y-o-y growth reported in January. Despite the dip, month-on-month hiring activities between January and February witnessed a marginal 2% increase, and the sector has emerged as the top growth industry sector in the market.

"As global economic uncertainty continue to rise, economic growth in Singapore and Malaysia, especially, remains slow. Some employers within businesses in the banking sectors across the board are not in a hurry to hire and have even resorted to laying off employees to cope with the challenging business environment," said Monster.com (India, Middle East, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong) managing director Sanjay Modi.

The MEI is a monthly gauge of online job posting activity, 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. 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.