List of critical occupations in Malaysia and their top required skills

This year's list of 'critical' occupations in Malaysia includes managing directors and chief executives, finance managers, and human resource managers, as analysed in the recently-released World Bank report, Monitoring Occupational Shortages: Lessons from Malaysia's Critical Occupations List (COL).

Updated and released yearly by the Critical Skills Monitoring Committee (CSC), the COL is a mechanism for coordinating human capital development policies by identifying occupations with significant labour market shortages.

*The CSC is led by TalentCorp and the Institute of Labour Market Information and Analysis (ILMIA) under the Ministry of Human Resources (MOHR).

The government can use the COL to calibrate skills development policies to meet emerging labour market demands.

Commenting on this, M Kulasegaran, Human Resources Minister of Malaysia, said: "The Mid-Term Review of the 11th Malaysia Plan accords the COL a central place in Malaysia's labour market development.

"By identifying labour market needs as they arise, the COL is a powerful policy tool that can be used by government, private sector, academia, job creators and job seekers alike."

Snapshot: Malaysia's 2018/2019 Critical Occupations List

Key occupations across sectors can be found on the list, together with the top three essential skills of each occupation. View a snippet below, and refer to the full report for the entire list.

Key policies that can be tackled with the Critical Occupations List

According to the report, some potential future applications of the COL include upskilling and reskilling, employment services, and immigration.

Relating to skilling, it can inform employers of the development of technical and vocational education training, and higher education, programming; target incentives to businesses in seeking apprentices; inform employers of the development of occupational standards and accreditation, and more.

As for employment services, the COL can further improve the efficiency of job matching for retrenched and displaced workers.

Last, for immigration, having this list can further improve the responsiveness of immigration admissions decisions to economic needs faced.

Lead image / iStockInfographic / World Bank