Abstract:

In year 2020, global labour market faced challenges following the COVID-19 pandemic. 81 million people lost their job in the Asia Pacific region due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Statistics of Labour Force in Malaysia, the unemployment rate in Malaysia was 4.8% with 764.4 thousand unemployed persons in November 2020. COVID-19 has severely affected millions of young people around the world, especially the fresh graduates who wanted to start their professional lives. Based on a recent survey by Talent bank, 73.41% of almost 200 organisations in Malaysia revealed that they are willing to hire fresh graduates from both private and public universities next year. While 21.97% of the respondents were unsure about the decision and 4.62% would prefer not to hire fresh graduates, the overall employment prospects for fresh graduates are undoubtedly optimistic. However, the study revealed that, majority of the students had problem to secure a job during this pandemic. This study collects insights about the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on fresh graduate employability among ICT graduates in Malaysia. Besides that, this paper examines the causes of unemployment among ICT graduates in Malaysia. 88 fresh graduate students who graduated from February 2020 participated in this study. Due to pandemic, only quantitative method was used to collect the data. The data was then analyzed using SPSS20. This study is important as it will discuss the impact of coronavirus on employability and the causes of unemployment among ICT graduates in Malaysia.

Keywords:

Covid-19, employability, fresh graduates, unemployment.