A Descriptive Assessment of Foreign Labour and Labour Productivity across Economic Sectors in Malaysia

The purpose of this paper is to identify the sector with the highest involvement of foreign labour and to compare labour productivity across the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors in Malaysia between 2010 and 2020 using a descriptive research design. The study comprises three sectoral models representing the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors. Descriptive analysis, based on mean comparisons, was conducted to examine labour productivity and the level of foreign labour involvement over the study period. The findings were further discussed in relation to previous studies, and a comparative analysis was performed to explore patterns between foreign labour participation and labour productivity across sectors.
The results indicate that the secondary sector recorded the highest level of labour productivity, followed by the primary sector, while the tertiary sector exhibited the lowest labour productivity. In terms of foreign labour involvement, the secondary sector had the highest proportion of foreign workers, followed by the tertiary sector, whereas the primary sector recorded the lowest level of foreign labour participation. These findings provide useful insights for policymakers in understanding the distribution of foreign labour and labour productivity across Malaysia's economic sectors. The results may assist policymakers in identifying sectors with high foreign labour participation and formulating appropriate labour market strategies accordingly. Given the descriptive nature of this study, future research may employ econometric techniques to examine the relationship between foreign labour and labour productivity across sectors and to provide further evidence on their association within the Malaysian context.

Foreign Labour, Local Labours, , Capital, Labour Productivity, Economic Sector

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