Malaysia’s digital economy ambition faces disconnect in workplace and schools

The country’s workers are ill-equipped to meet the needs of the digital economy with AI threatening to leave them in the shade, analysts say

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Kuala Lumpur city skyline. Malaysia’s goal to become a digital economy faces challenges such as a shortage in skilled manpower. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 8:00am, 1 Mar 2025Updated: 8:19am, 1 Mar 2025

Career coach Ameirul Azraie Mustadza is brutally frank when he describes the young job-seeking Malaysians he has met.

They were “completely clueless” about the basics of job hunting, he said, citing poorly structured resumes, emails with no subject lines and cover letters lacking proper introductions or clear messages, among the litany of missteps.

The mistakes kept reappearing, the coach – whose book on navigating employment challenges last year was ranked among Malaysia’s top 10 nonfiction Malay titles – told This Week in Asia.

“That’s when it hit me: the gap wasn’t just in the advanced strategies I was teaching but in the fundamentals many Malaysians hadn’t been exposed to.”

Even as he strived to improve the rudimentary job-seeking skills of some of his clientele – typically aged between 25 and 40 – he warned the jobs they were trying to get might no longer be there soon.

Up to half of Malaysian jobs may be lost to artificial intelligence by 2040, according to Malaysia’s Khazanah Research Institute, with the automation era favouring those who can acquire new skills fast.

For those most vulnerable to the rise of AI, the bad news for them is the future is already here, according to industry observers.