Malaysia Jobless Rate Drops In January

Malaysia's unemployment rate decreased modestly in January, after stabilizing in the previous month, data released by the Department of Statistics showed Wednesday.

The jobless rate dropped to 3 percent in January from 3.1 percent in December, which was unchanged from November. In January 2011, the unemployment rate was 3.4 percent.

The number of unemployed persons declined to around 385,600 in January from about 399,300 in December.

Meanwhile, the number of persons in employment rose to around 12.44 million in January from around 12.41 million in the previous month. The labor force participation was 65.1 percent during the month, up from 64.6 percent recorded in December.