Youth job hunt tension grows as employers keep vacancies in shadows

SHAH ALAM - For thousands of Malaysian youths, the job hunt feels less like a search and more like a scavenger mission, minus the map.

While graduates sharpen their resumes and refresh job portals like it was a sport, many were actually competing in an unfair game where not all vacancies were even shown to them.

This is not just an aura, there was data behind it.

Recently, a concern was raised by UNI Malaysia Labour Centre (UNI-MLC) president Shafie BP Mammal, who pointed out that the real issue was not "graduates lacking quality", but something much simpler and far more frustrating which was employers were not openly sharing job vacancies.

He said a lot of job ads live quietly inside private job portals, random WhatsApp groups or hidden networks only insiders knew about. If it sounded like limited-edition sneakers dropping secretly, that is because it kind of is, but with actual livelihoods at stake and the impact is pretty real.

"Statistics show that the unemployment rate for youths aged 15 to 24 is around 9.9 per cent, involving more than 290,000 people, while those aged 15 to 30 record a rate of 6.2 per cent," Shafie said.

That’s a lot of young Malaysians scrolling endlessly for opportunities that may never appear on public feeds.

For families, this has been a long-running heartbreak. Shafie shared how their children have applied for jobs everywhere but still failed to secure permanent work, adding that they were uncertain whether they have missed opportunities simply because the information was not organised.

But there is finally a wild turn and maybe a good one.

To fix the hot mess energy, the government is planning a tweak to the Employment Insurance System Act 2017 (Act 800). The new Section 45F basically aims to stop hidden vacancies by requiring employers to list all job openings on MYFutureJobs first.

Think of it like making MYFutureJobs your "main Spotify playlist", while platforms like JobStreet or LinkedIn can still be the remixes.

Shafie added that this move would create a national go-to directory so graduates no longer need to decode job rumours or rely on lucky forwards from random WhatsApp uncles.

If everything goes through, the job-hunting season for Malaysian youths might finally feel less like a blind treasure hunt and more like a fair game where everyone gets to see the map.