• Unemployment rate eases to 4.6%
• The number of unemployed persons fell by 4.1k to 7373.5k in September
• Total labor force increased by 35.3k persons to 15.93 million
• Labor force participation rate remained at 68.4%
• Unemployment rate forecast revised to 4.2%

Employment continue to grow at a slower pace of 0.3% mom (Aug: 0.5%) to 15.19m persons in September. Meanwhile, year-on-year, the number of employed persons still on the declining trend posted negative 0.2% (Sep 2019: 15.23m persons). The employment-to-population ratio, which indicates the ability of an economy to create employment, remained at 65.2%. However, in terms of year-on-year, employmentto-population ratio dropped by 1.3 percentage points from 66.5%.

The unemployment rate dropped 0.1 percentage points to 4.6% in September. The number of unemployed persons declined by 0.6% to record 737.5k persons (Aug: 741.6k persons). Nonetheless, year-on-year, the unemployment rate for September increased 1.3 percentage points as compared to the same month of the preceding year with the number of unemployed persons registering an increase of 216.1k persons (Sep 2019: 521.4k persons).

The labour force participation rate remained at 68.4% in September after recorded an increase of 0.3 percentage points in the previous month. During the month, the number of labour force increased by 35.5k persons month-on-month to 15.93m persons (Aug: 15.90m persons). Comparing with the same month of the previous year, the number of labour force rose by 179.4k persons from 15.75m persons while the LFPR declined by 0.3 percentage points (Sep 2019: 68.7%).

Source: BIMB Securities Research - 10 Nov 2020