KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 17): Malaysia’s 2020 goal of achieving its high income nation status is 'slightly challenging', with unemployment levels expected to rise in 2017 to about 3.6%, as the number of unemployed persons grow about 11% month-on-month, said independent economist Dr Muhammed Abdul Khalid.

He said while the unemployment rate has increased marginally year-on-year to 3.5% in September this year, with an expected hike to 3.6% in 2017, the number of jobless people has grown to about 512,600 as of September this year, compared with 490,300 in the corresponding period last year.

Muhammed, who spoke on the job market outlook for Malaysia at the Millennial Development Programme launch by U.S.-based General Electric International Inc and Malaysia's NexGen Impact, said 90% of those aged between 15 and 29 were unemployed last year.

“Even the number of unemployed graduates has increased to 34% in 2015, from 30% in 2013. There is one in three graduates with no jobs. Let’s not talk about high income jobs, (because) to get a high income job, you have to have a job first. 

“I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but it is alarming and I have to be frank about it. We are achieving economic growth at 5% this year and 4.5% expected next year, and although our unemployment rate is low, I am more concerned with the number of unemployed people,” he said.

Formerly a Khazanah Research Institute director, Muhammed said the outlook was not a 'bed of roses' due to global uncertainties and lack of job creation in Malaysia.

Muhammed added that the drop in high-skilled labour to 25.7% in 2015, from 27.6% in 2010, was due to arrival of migrant workers and the lack of high-skilled jobs.

“To be fair, the government did try to increase the number of high-skilled jobs by introducing the Skim Latihan 1Malaysia (SL1M),” he said, adding that SL1M did not hit its target.