Malaysia’s median monthly wage in March for citizen formal employees was 2,600 ringgit (572 U.S. dollars), with the number of citizen formal employees being 6.45 million persons, official data showed Friday.
The Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) said in a statement that male formal employees accounted for 55.5 percent or totaled 3.58 million persons with the monthly median wage of 2,664 ringgit.
Meanwhile, 44.5 percent of total formal employees were female employees, with the median monthly wage of 2,545 ringgit.
Compared to March 2022, the median monthly wages for both male and female formal employees showed an increase of 8 percent and 8.6 percent, respectively.
According to the DOSM, the highest median monthly wage in March was recorded for formal employees aged 45 to 49 and aged 40 to 44, with 3,500 ringgit.
These two groups collectively constituted nearly 20 percent of the total formal employees.
Subsequently, the median monthly wage started to show a decrease for the age group 50 to 54 years, recorded at 3,400 ringgit in March.
On the other hand, the age group below 20 years received the lowest median monthly wage of about 1,500 ringgit.
Meanwhile, all sectors recorded an increase in median monthly wages in March.
Despite representing 0.5 percent of the total formal employees, the mining and quarrying sector recorded the highest median monthly wage in March at 7,500 ringgit.
Meanwhile, the agriculture sector posted the lowest median monthly wage of 1,900 ringgit, marking a year-on-year growth of 8.9 percent.
According to the DOSM, 34.8 percent of the total formal employees earned below 2,000 ringgit per month.
However, this proportion decreased from 40.2 percent recorded in March 2022, likely due to the minimum wage increase starting in May 2022.
In the meantime, about 5.2 percent of the total formal employees earned the highest level of wages at 15,000 ringgit and above.
Data showed the highest wage recipient group received more than six times of wages compared to the lowest wage recipient group. (1 ringgit equals 0.22 U.S. dollar)