Malaysia (1)

Title of the survey

Annual survey of manufacturing industries

Organization responsible

Department of Statistics

Periodicity of the survey

Annual

Objectives of the survey

The survey results are used mainly to determine the growth, composition and distribution of manufacturing at the five-digit level of industry, and to measure the various costs, inputs and outputs for manufacturing. They are also used for economic projections and for compiling national accounts.

Main labour topics covered by the survey

Employment, earnings and compensation of employees.

Reference period

Employment: as at 31 December or the last pay period of the reference year. Earnings and compensation of employees: the calendar year, or the accounting year if this is different from the calendar year.

Coverage of the survey

Geographical

The whole country.

Industrial

Manufacturing: the mechanical or chemical transformation of inorganic or inorganic substances into new products, whether the work is performed by power driven machines or by hand, whether it is done in the factory or in workers' homes, and whether the products are sold at wholesale or retail. The assembly of the component parts of manufactured products is considered as manufacturing except in cases where the activities are appropriately classified under Construction. Establishments primarily engaged in repair work are included and classified according to the type of product repaired.

Establishments

All establishments registered under the Industrial Co-ordination Act (ICA) 1975, and all operating manufacturing establishments with certain specified volume of employment, which varies according to region and industry group. All manufacturing establishments with a paid-up capital of 2.5 million rupees or more and with 75 or more full-time employees are required to register under the ICA. They are all covered in the survey regardless of the lower limit on the volume of employment specified for each industry group.

Persons

All persons engaged by the establishments covered.

Occupations

Not relevant.

Concepts and definitions

Employment

The data on employment are collected with respect to all persons engaged, including working proprietors and active business partners; unpaid family workers; and full-time and part-time employees. Working proprietors and active business partners: individual proprietors and partners, part-time or full-time, who are actively engaged in the work of the establishments. The following are excluded: silent and inactive partners and members of the proprietors' family, unless they participate in the control and management of the business. Unpaid family workers: all persons of the household of any of the owners of the establishment who perform a specified job full-time or part-time, and who work for a minimum of one third of the normal working time of the establishment, but do not received payment either in cash or in kind for his or her work. Such workers generally receive food, shelter and other support as part of the household of an owner, but these provisions would continue whether they worked in the establishment or not. Paid employees: all persons who worked during the year in the establishment and received pay, including persons working away from establishment when paid by and under the control of the establishment (e.g. travelling engineering representatives, travelling maintenance and repair personnel), salaried managers and directors of incorporated enterprises except when paid solely for their attendance at Board of Directors' meetings. Full-time employees: all workers who work for at least six hours a day, and for at least 20 days a month. Part-time employees: all workers who normally work for less than six hours a day or less than 20 days a month. Data are collected separately by sex and for working proprietors and active business partners, unpaid family workers, part-time employees and the following categories of full-time employees:

managerial and professional: managers are those who decide or participate in formulating the policy of the organization and plan, organize and direct the interpretation and execution of policies; their work involves the responsibility for their organization as a whole or for more than one department of an organization; professionals are those who conduct research and apply in a professional capacity scientific knowledge and methods to a variety of technological, economic, social, industrial and government problems; the term applies generally to persons required to hold professional qualifications to practise (e.g. lawyers, accountants, doctors, chemists and engineers); classified as:
- professionals, including managers who are professional by virtue of their qualifications; and
- non-professionals: managers who do not hold any professional qualifications;
technical and supervisory workers: technical workers are those engaged in technical research and quality control work among other activities; they usually work under the direction and supervision of professionally qualified personnel (e.g. laboratory technicians, quality control technicians, nurses and draughtsmen); supervisory workers are those who supervise various activities or a particular kind of activity (e.g. production activity within an establishment); they control and coordinate the activities of the workers under their charge;
teachers: professionals and non-professionals who teach in schools, colleges and institutions;
clerical and related workers: those who compile and maintain records of financial transactions and other business activities including material and production planning, handle cash on behalf of the organization and its customers, record oral or written matter by shorthand writing, typing and other means, e.g. clerks, typists, stenographers, personal secretaries, bookkeepers and storekeepers.
general workers: those who perform general and miscellaneous functions, of whom:
- ushers and ticket sellers;
- drivers, conductors and lorry attendants;
- others (e.g. telephone operators, office attendants, security guards, gardeners, etc.);
other directly employed workers: the balance of the full-time paid employees employed directly by the establishment and not included elsewhere, e.g. factory, construction, mine and stevedoring workers, classified as skilled, semi-skilled or unskilled;
workers employed through labour contractors; classified as skilled, semi-skilled or unskilled.

Earnings

Data are collected on wages and salaries, relating to the value of money payments, including bonuses, cash allowances, etc. made to all paid workers during the calendar year, whether or not all workers were still on the payroll at the end of that year. Amounts are recorded gross, before deductions for employees' contributions to the Employees' Provident Fund (EPF). Allowances to working proprietors, working partners and unpaid family workers are not included. Data are collected separately by sex for the same categories of worker as the employment data.

Compensation of employees

In addition to earnings, data are also collected on payments in kind paid to employees, the value of free wearing apparel provided and employers' contributions. Payments in kind cover the cost of goods and services furnished to employees free of charge, or at markedly reduced cost, which are primarily of benefit to the employees as consumers. Outlays by employers which are of benefit to them as well as their employees, e.g. expenditure by employers on amenities provided at the place of work, sports and other recreational facilities and reimbursements by employers of the expenses of travel, entertainment and work clothing, tools and equipment which are incurred by their employees are excluded. Data are collected separately on the following items, for all employees together:

free medical attention;
free food;
free accommodation;
other payments in kind.

The value of free wearing apparel covers items such as uniforms, overalls and work clothes; data are collected for all employees together. Employers' contributions relate to the following schemes, for which data are collected separately, for all employees:

Government provident funds: provident funds that are organized and managed by the Government;
other provident funds;
Government social security schemes: social security schemes run by the Government;
private social security schemes.

Wage/salary rates

Not relevant.

Hours of work

Not relevant.

International recommendations

The definitions of earnings and compensation of employees conform to those contained in the international recommendations.

Classifications

Components of labour cost / compensation of employees

Does not apply.

Industrial

The data are classified according to the Malaysia Industrial Classification 1972 (updated 1979) at the five-digit level. If an establishment is involved in a number of activities, of which there is only one significant activity, the other activities are subsumed under this activity and the establishment is classified in the industry of the significant activity. If several significant activities are carried out, the establishment is requested to submit separate returns for each activity, and the data are classified accordingly. The Malaysia Industrial Classification 1972 (updated 1979) can be linked to the International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC), Revision 2, 1968 and Revision 3, 1990.

Occupational

Not relevant.

Others

The data are also classified according to:

type of ownership (held by Malaysian residents: privately owned, Government owned; held by non-Malaysian residents);
employment size;
size of fixed assets;
volume of output;
region.

Sample size and design

Statistical unit

The sampling and reporting unit is the establishment, defined ideally as an economic unit which engages under a single ownership or control in one or predominantly one kind of industrial activity at a single location. If an establishment is involved in more than one significant activity, in terms of value, it is requested to submit separate returns for each activity. If an establishment is involved in several activities, but only one of these is significant in terms of value, the rest of the activities are subsumed under this one activity.

Survey universe / sample frame

The survey frame is obtained from the Registrar of Companies (ROC) and the Registrar of Businesses. It includes the list of establishments registered under the Industrial Coordination Act (ICA) 1975, lists of companies approved by the Malaysian Industrial Development Authority (MIDA), the list of mills licensed by the Lembaga Padi dan Beras Negara (LPN), etc. The lists are updated each year to take into account new establishments, those that have closed down and changes in correspondence addresses and in the activities of the establishments. The updating process includes sending screening questionnaires to the establishments and checking the various administrative sources. In 1992, the survey frame comprised 8,161 establishments.

Sample design

The survey is conducted as a census every five years, and on a sample basis in the intercensal years. All establishments above the specified cut-off based on the volume of employment are included. The lower limit varies according to industry and region.

Field work

Data collection

Normally questionnaires are mailed out at the end of the February following the reference year, and establishments are required to reply within one month. If respondents fail to reply, a reminder is sent. If that fails, field staff are sent out. In order to carry out the field work effectively, the state branches of the Department of Statistics have the responsibility of obtaining all replies from respondents. In the case of non-response, information from the previous year is usually used.

Survey questionnaire

This contains explanations of all items, and is accompanied by detailed instructions for its completion. Information is collected on the following:

characteristics of the establishment (name, location, legal status, type of ownership, reporting period and days worked by the establishment, total overtime hours worked and wages paid for overtime, principal activity and other activities);
employment and payroll: total number of workers by citizenship and ethnic group, and gross salary and wage payments, by category of worker and sex;
capital expenditure and value of fixed assets;
value of production;
income from property;
expenditure (including the value of payments in kind and employers' contributions) and consumption.

Substitution of sampling units

None.

Data processing and editing

After the questionnaires are returned to the respective state branches, they are edited and coded manually. If no further query is necessary, they are forwarded to the Headquarters, where they are checked and the data entered on the computer and validated. The computer checks are very comprehensive, and include range checks and consistency checks. In the case of inconsistent data, queries are addressed to the establishment. There is no adjustment of data affected by abnormal circumstances, such as strike, fire, flood, etc.

Types of estimates

Totals. When the response rate reaches about 95 per cent in terms of the number of units and about 99 per cent in terms of the estimated output, the output of the smaller non-responding establishments is estimated on the basis of averages calculated for respondents. Simple unbiased estimation is used to calculate the desired parameters and the variances. Totals are calculated as follows:

State by industry:

State:

Industry:

National:

where:

i: establishment
I: industry
Z: size stratum
S: state
N_IZS: population size of stratum Z of industry I in state S
n_IZS: sample size
w_i,IZS=N_IZS/n_IZS: survey weight for unit i in cell IZS.

Construction of indices

None.

Weighting of sample results

Not relevant.

Adjustments

Non-response

The results are not adjusted for non-response.

Other bias

The results are not adjusted for any other bias.

Use of benchmark data

Not relevant.

Seasonal variations

Not relevant.

Indicators of reliability of the estimates

Coverage of the sampling frame

About 21 per cent of the target population is covered by the survey frame, in terms of the number of establishments, and about 72 per cent in terms of employment.

Sampling error / sampling variance

The typical standard error is between 0.6 and 4.5 at the one-digit level of industry. Stratum level variances are calculated as:

where:

Non-response rate

The typical rate of non-response is about 5 per cent in terms of establishments and about 1 per cent in terms of employment.

Non-sampling errors

Not relevant.

Conformity with other sources

The results are compared with data from the Monthly Manufacturing Surveys.

Available series

The following tables are published regularly:

principal statistics, by industry, state, legal status, ownership, employment size group, output size group, fixed assets size group
employment payroll, by category of worker
composition of output, by major industrial group
composition of input, by major industrial group

History of the survey

The first survey, which was conducted on a census basis, took place with reference to 1959. Subsequent censuses were carried out with reference to 1963, 1968, 1973 and 1981. In intercensal years, the survey has taken place each year except 1980. It covers all large establishments above a certain size (based on employment) and all those registered under the ICA, except in 1988, when sampling was used. The sampling design used was as follows: All establishments registered under the ICA and all those above a specified size, by industry, were included in the sample. Among establishments below the specified lower limit for employment size, (a) those in Sabah and Sarawak were all included, and (b) a sample was selected for Peninsular Malaysia, except that industries with a small number of establishments (less than 30) were all included.

Documentation

The results have been published in the following: Department of Statistics: Survey of manufacturing industries (annual; Kuala Lumpur) - prior to 1975 and from 1992 to present. idem: Industrial surveys (annual; ibid.), 1975 to 1991.

Confidentiality / Reliability criteria

The statistics are subject to the Statistics Act 1965 (Revised 1989).

Other information

Data supplied to the ILO for publication

Data on paid employment in manufacturing are published in Tables 5A and 5B of the Yearbook of Labour Statistics.