Now Reading
KL: Not As Affected By Covid But Way Overworked

KL: Not As Affected By Covid But Way Overworked

Survey results in August did not take into account our third wave, however.

Subscribe to our Telegram channel for the latest stories and updates.


A recent survey noted that Malaysians were severely overworked, which surprises no one. However, the good news is also that compared to other cities, Malaysians have not been as badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Last year, we ranked dead last– 40th on a list of 40 cities- on keyless access technology company Kisi‘s survey conducted on work-life balance.

This year, they added an additional 10 cities to their survey, and as a result, we are no longer dead last. We are, however, still pretty low on the list, at 47 out of 50.

Credit: Kisi

Kuala Lumpur has dismal work-life balance.

We are the fourth most overworked country, coming in behind Hong Kong, Singapore, and Seoul. Surprisingly enough, even Tokyo has slightly better work-life balance, coming in at 5th.

The main reasons for our sad working life is the longer commute hours and lack of vacation days. Additionally, it was also noted that while KLites were offered vacation days, not many of us actually use them.

The survey also took into account other factors, such as total hours worked per week, paid parental leaves, total percentage of population in the city that is overworked, percentage of unemployment in the city, and percentage of people who work multiple jobs.

Workload seems to have increased as many Malaysians have transitioned to working from home.
(Credit: Freepik)

NGOs have long been campaigning for paid paternal leaves among other demands to raise the Malaysian quality of life, but it looks like it will still be some time before it becomes a widely offered incentive.

Still, it’s not all bad.

Kuala Lumpur is considered pretty resilient against the Covid-19 pandemic.

Kuala Lumpur is also ranking on the bottom of this list, but that’s a good thing! We are the 13th least impacted city by the pandemic, and the 5th with lowest projections of unemployment.

The survey took into account factors such as mobility of the people during this time, the rate of Covid-19-related deaths, and projected economic forecasts to rank the cities in terms of being impacted.

You wouldn’t really think that there’s a CMCO happening with the amount of traffic on Federal Highway, either.
(Credit: TRP)

This means that while KLites have felt a great deal of restriction from our various stages of movement control orders, they’re really not that bad compared to other cities across the world.

Then, for rate of unemployment, the survey took the projected percent change for 2020 and compared it to the rate of unemployment in 2019.

Once again, while many KLites reported job losses or loss of income, as a whole the city is not suffering as much as other cities. In fact, three major cities in the USA have the highest rates of unemployment: Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Cleveland respectively.

However, the survey was conducted and processed in August, before the country hit our third and deadliest wave, so things might have changed by now.

TLDR: We’re working ourselves to death, but at least we still have jobs, right?


Share your thoughts on TRP’s FacebookTwitter, and Instagram.

Get more stories like this to your inbox by signing up for our newsletter.

© 2024 The Rakyat Post. All Rights Reserved. Owned by 3rd Wave Media Sdn Bhd