The increase of the unemployment rate during this period was a short-term adverse affect as the country consistently achieved more than 7% gross domestic product (GDP) growth with low inflation in the 1980s and 1990s, and a steady decrease of the unemployment rate from 1988 to 1997. However, since 1998, the rates of unemployment have been on the rise again although the increase was not as high as in the mid-1980s. Malaysia experienced several years of rapid growth in the 1990s which began to slow down at the end of the decade and it registered its lowest growth rate in 2001. During the period between 2002 and 2005, the average GDP growth was 5.74%. However, the changing of the economic structure may cause a rise in unemployment. For many years, manufacturing had been the strongest sector in the country and the main contributor towards employment creation until the financial crisis in mid-1997. From this period onwards, the agriculture sector was being progressively replaced by the manufacturing and services sector. The services sector, in particular, required people who possess the right soft skills such as communication and interpersonal skills but acquiring graduates with those qualities has been quite difficult. First of all, graduates may only be trained in the right technical knowledge and not in soft skills. Secondly, since the official language of Malaysia is Bahasa Malaysia and the teaching of almost all subjects in primary and secondary schools, and public universities are not in English, local graduates may find it very difficult to communicate in this language when they go out into the „real‟ world.
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