The Problem of Unemployment Among Fresh Graduates

In Malaysia, there are graduates remain unemployed need more concern by the government because it have become a serious case in Malaysia. In year 2015 involving 132,900 graduates from institutions of higher learning all over Malaysia shows that over half of graduates remained unemployed after graduation, while 9.7% were still awaiting job placement. Compare to male there are more female graduates in this country were unemployed because they lacked the relevant skills required in the labor market despite having excellent academic results.

The reason why fresh graduates is because fresh graduates is lack of experience. Most of the companies prefer to employ experiences worker rather than those without working experiences. The reason why employers prefer experienced employees is because experienced employees can complete the jobs easily and will not spending so much time on learning their works compare to employees without experiences. When employees lack of experiences possible that they cannot complete the job well on time and may spend some time on adapting to the new environment and less focus on the jobs. So the companies need to provide additional training and courses for those employees and this will definitely contribute to the cost of the company. Next, the graduates are lack of social and communication skills. Most of the graduates with rural background lack of communication skills because most of the residents staying in villages communicate using their own dialects or mother tongues. They seldom speak in English. However, in Malaysia the working environment mostly requires people to communicate efficiently in English and Malay. According to Ministry of Human Resources, it shows that in Malaysia female graduates more then male graduates are unemployed because female are weak in communication, social skills and female also have a poor command of language and low levels of self-confidence compare to male graduates despite achieve excellent academic results.

The graduates remain unemployed is because graduates is too picky about the job or company. Some of the graduate job-seekers are with high expectation for their first jobs. Even they are lack of working experience, they still try to apply for higher salaries compared those who work more then one or two year. Furthermore, students who graduated with excellent results are no longer secured good jobs or competitive edges in career advancement. There is some ways to reduce the unemployment among graduates in Malaysia. Firstly, all university should improve the quality of education by introducing industrial training in their syllabus to avoid increasing of unemployment. The syllabus in university should provide more exposure on real-life industrial training, such as industrial attachment and internship program. Beside that university also can increase duration of internship from 3 months to 6 months or even longer to help graduates to gain more experience and skill that could help them in future.

In conclusion, fresh graduates unemployed is due to system of education . English language is relatively important for cross cultural communication involving international participation. Malaysian graduates should have an awareness of importance to master the language. Hope that the Government will be able to improve our education system for better future and to decrease unemployment among fresh graduates.