Eurozone unemployment hits new record

Unemployment is at the highest rate since the euro was launched in 1999

The jobless rate in the 17 countries that use the single currency was 10.4% in December, unchanged from November's figure which was revised up from 10.3%.

Some 16.5 million people were out of work in the eurozone in December, up 751,000 on the year before.

The highest unemployment rate remains in Spain (22.9%), while the lowest is in Austria (4.1%).

Unemployment has been rising throughout 2011, as the debt crisis in the region has continued. In December 2010, the unemployment rate in the euro area was 10%.



Investment delays
 
Guillaume Menuet, economist at Citigroup, said he expected the number of people out of work to increase throughout 2012.

"If you think about the direction of employment expectations that you see across various business surveys, the outlook for employment doesn't look particularly enticing, simply because the uncertainty is very high.

“Start Quote

Much energy and argument has been spent on this agreement. It is questionable, however, whether it will have much influence on the immediate crisis. ”

Gavin Hewitt BBC Europe editor

 

"In many cases you find firms continuing to delay investment projects. For those that are still making profits, hiring is being frozen, and for those which are under pressure to hit results or losing money, job losses are becoming the only solution that they have," he said. 

In the 27 EU countries, the unemployment rate was 9.9% in December, with 23.8 million people out of work. November's figure was also revised up from 9.8% to 9.9%.

The biggest increases over the past year were seen in Greece, Cyprus and Spain.

The largest falls took place in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Deteriorating situation

  The issue of jobs and economic growth was a key area for discussion at this week's summit of EU leaders in Brussels.

On Monday, figures showed that the Spanish economy shrank by 0.3% in the last quarter of 2011. It is now widely expected that Spain will enter recession in the first quarter of this year.

Also on Monday, France cut its growth forecast for this year to 0.5% from 1% "to take into account the deterioration of the economic situation".

At the Brussels summit, 25 of the 27 member states agreed to join a fiscal treaty, aimed at much closer co-ordination of budget policy across the EU to prevent excessive debts accumulating.

The UK and the Czech Republic did not sign up to it. UK Prime Minister David Cameron said he had "legal concerns" about the use of EU institutions in enforcing the treaty, while the Czechs cited "constitutional reasons" for their refusal.

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Poor attitude caused jobless, low income, poor career!

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The problem with fresh grads

By P. ARUNA aruna@thestar.com.my

 PETALING JAYA: Poor attitude -including asking for too much money - is the chief reason why employers shy away from hiring fresh graduates. Another common complaint is that many graduates are poor in English.

A survey by online recruitment agency Jobstreet.com showed that 55% of employers cited unrealistic expectations of salaries while 48% of them said poor English was the main reason why Malaysian fresh graduates from both public and private institutions remain unemployed.

“While previous surveys named poor English as the main cause for unemployment, bad attitude has now topped the list,” said its chief operating officer Suresh Thiru.

He said their attitudes were so bad that some did not even bother to inform the companies if they were running late or unable to attend scheduled interviews.

It was announced that the number of jobless graduates had increased from 65,500 to 71,600 although the overall unemployment rate had dropped from 3.4% last year to 3.1% during the first quarter of this year.

Another study by recruitment agency Kelly Services showed that fresh graduates asked for flexible working hours and expected their work to accommodate their personal life, not vice versa.

Its marketing director Jeannie Khoo said employers were also turned off by the lackadaisical attitude and lack of drive to improve among many of them.

“They have the misconception that they can earn high salaries at entry-level. They enter the banking industry expecting to earn RM3,000 while the market rate is only RM2,200,” she said.

PricewaterhouseCoopers Malaysia head of recruitment Salika Suksuwan said some candidates had many offers in hand but acted unprofessionally in rejecting job offers - by not turning up for interviews or the first day at work.

“We sometimes have to call them and remind them about a scheduled interview when they didn't turn up,” she said.

Talent Corp CEO Johan Mahmood Merican urged fresh graduates not to make demands on their salary.
“It is more important to join a company that can develop your skills and prepare you for future opportunities,” he said.

In a related development, Human Resource Deputy Minister Datuk Maznah Mazlan said half of the applicants who registered with the JobsMalaysia portal (www.jobsmalaysia.gov.my) had found employment.

Speaking when launching the Graduan Aspire 2011 employment fair yesterday, she said about 300,000 job applicants were currently registered with the website.

Star readers come to fresh grads’ defence

By P. ARUNA aruna@thestar.com.my

PETALING JAYA: Readers of The Star have come to the defence of unemployed graduates who are accused of demanding high salaries, saying it was almost impossible to survive in the city with the entry-level pay offered by many companies.

Karthikumaran Nadarajan, 26, who was unemployed for six months, said he had never demanded a high salary and had attended every interview.

The electrical and electronics graduate felt that job offers had not come his way due to stiff competition, especially for jobs advertised on major online recruitment agencies.

It was reported yesterday that poor attitude including asking for too much money was among reasons why employers shied away from hiring fresh graduates.

A survey by online recruitment agency Jobstreet.com showed that 55% of employers cited unrealistic expectations of salaries while 48% of them said poor English was the main reason.

Photography graduate Noorezerey Abdul Ghafar, 23, has been unemployed for the past two years and has not received any offer despite actively applying for jobs online.

“I have never been demanding about salary,” he said.

On The Star's Facebook page, some readers agreed that many fresh graduates had bad attitude while many defended fresh graduates.

“I absolutely agree. Poor attitude, arrogance, and they think they deserve a high pay with their bad English,” said reader Patrick Yau while human resources practitioner Vincent Cheong said he had seen some fresh graduates who even had difficulty filling up an application form.

“Worst of all, they demand high salary and benefits to support their social life expenses,” he said.
Another user Yew Lee Yin said some showed up for interviews wearing unsuitable attire and others never bothered to show up.

However, David Hamtaro said anyone living in Kuala Lumpur needed to earn a minimum of RM3,000 to be able to survive while Ong Joo Parn argued that employers needed to realise that the cost of living had gone up.

Bank Negara training aims to make youths marketable

KUALA LUMPUR: Despite holding an industrial bio-technology degree, Thiyagarajan Subramaniam had difficulty finding a job as he was unable to speak English fluently and lacked self-confidence.

However, now he is an administrator at IBM and is able to speak the language more confidently after joining the Bank Negara's Graduates Programme (GP), a corporate social responsibility initiative.

He said the programme, which is aimed at enhancing employability of graduates under the age of 25 from low income families, helped him discover that he could quickly come up with ideas and to be more disciplined.

Prior to joining the programme, the 26-year-old attended more than 10 interviews with multinational companies but none got back to him after that.

“I took up some part-time jobs for income as it was difficult to get a job in bio-technology,” Klang-born Thiyagarajan said.

Fellow coursemate Edmond Leo Lopus, 26, repeatedly sent his resume to various companies but only one offered an interview after he had completed his degree in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering in October 2009.

But his fortunes changed once he was accepted in the Bank Negara's Graduates Programme. Even before completing 23 months of on-the-job training at Swedish Motor (Volvo) through the programme, he was absorbed as a process quality engineer at the company.

“This is my dream job as I've always loved cars and aeroplanes,” he said.

Johor-born Siti Syarah Sanip (pic) said she was afraid of ending up like her friends, who did better than her in university but worked as cashiers and salesmen after not being able to secure a corporate job.

After joining the programme, she now works as a junior executive at Proton Holdings Berhad's finance and planning department and is grateful to Bank Negara for choosing her to join the programme.

Bank Negara assistant governor Marzunisham Omar said 98% out of the 500 of the programme's first batch have been employed while 14 participants from the 200 graduates in the second batch secured permanent employment after one month of attachment.

He said training for the second batch started on March 28 and would end next year. He added that plans for a third batch were in the pipeline.

A recent Jobstreet.com survey cited poor attitude and poor English as among the reasons many fresh graduates were having difficulty in securing jobs.

Jobstreet.com chief operating officer Suresh Thiru said previous surveys named the poor command of English as the main cause for unemployment, but bad attitude had now topped the list.

Trends in US, Europe will affect the Malaysian Economy

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Economist: Trends in US, Europe will affect M’sia

By LIZ LEE lizlee@thestar.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia should keep an eye on political trends and unemployment rates in the United States and European countries as these factors will affect the local economy, says UBS Investment Bank managing director and global economist Paul Donovan.

Due to persistent long-term unemployment in the United States and Europe, governments in these countries would want to protect their local jobs and therefore limit international trade, he said at a roundtable session with the media yesterday.

As a result, Donovan said, politicians would try to run economies, which meant rising political risk in the global economy.

Donovan: I believe we will now see a period of relative stability.

 

Donovan said while politics had always influenced Asian economies, the United States and European governments had for the past two decades maintained a declining role in managing their economies.

“If we look back, the trend of reducing political risk will be reversed as politics is rising in the United States and Europe (now). What happens there will affect this region significantly.

“Malaysia, as a global open economy, will have to take note as decisions made in these foreign countries will have implications as to where the Malaysian economy is heading in the next few years,” he added.

Donovan said the Middle East remained potentially volatile but would not be the biggest political risk for this region.

“Through regulation, governments are playing a direct role in managing the economy. Certain countries will impose capital control and restriction on investments, which changes capital flow around the world.

“The trade protection that the United States and Europe has put in place means that Asia has to change the way it generates growth,” he said.



Donovan noted that exports would no longer be a reliable source for economic expansion. “Malaysia should look into (having a) domestic-focused economy with more domestic investments and consumption,” he said.

As for the world economy, Donovan said the forecast 3.9% growth had been slightly revised downward to 3.6% following the natural disasters in Japan recently.

“At the start of this year, growth momentum was quite good. First-quarter GDP numbers were better than expected in Malaysia but economists say there will be a levelling off of growth.

“I believe we will now see a period of relative stability,” he said, attributing that to continued fair growth in the United States and Europe.

He added that there would be limited slowdown in Malaysia in the second and third quarters.

“We will see a trend-like growth globally, which will continue to keep the Malaysian economy at a reasonable growth rate of 4.5% or 5% over the next two years,” Donovan added.

However, he said, this also meant that things did not get worse or better, reflecting the unchanging unemployment rates and spare capacity in countries that had not recovered well from the recession in 2008 and 2009.

The United States is facing its highest unemployment rate since 1983, with more than 40% of its citizens unemployed for more than six months.