Overemployment of Workers in Penang, Malaysia: An Empirical Analysis

Many workers today encounter the problem of overemployment which occurs when actual working hours exceed preferred or desired working hours. Overemployed workers desire to work fewer hours although this may entail a concomitant decline in earnings. This research is conducted to examine the likelihood of overemployment among employees in a particular state in Malaysia, that is, Penang. This study uses primary data that was collected in a survey encompassing a total of 525 employees in the state. A logit model is used to analyse the relationship between the likelihood of overemployment and various socio-demographic, household and work-related variables. The factors that are significantly related to overemployment are ethnicity, age, education, number of children in the household, occupation, hours of work and control over work schedule. Based on the findings of this paper, it is suggested that policies such as offering part-time jobs or job-sharing options to older workers, implementing family-friendly policies, adopting decent working time measures and strategies that give workers more control over their work schedule are some possible ways to deal with the issue of overemployment.