Poverty, Inflation and Unemployment: Role of Policy Makers in Eradicate the Problem

Introduction Unemployment, inflation and poverty have become issues worldwide, including Malaysia. Unemployment can be defined as those of working age who is without work, but who are available for work at current wage rate. In other word, unemployment involved people who are seeking for a job, but unable to find one. Historically, from 1998 until 2013, Malaysia Unemployment Rate average 3.33 Percent reaching an all time high of 4.5 Percent in March of 1999 and a record low of 2.70 Percent in August of 2012. In Malaysia, the unemployment rate is measured by the number of people actively looking for a job as a percentage of the labour force (Trading Economies, 2013). Whereas, inflation is a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money. Meaning that, inflation is a lot of money chasing after few goods. In Malaysia, as reported by Department of Statistics Malaysia, the annual inflation rate increased to 1.6 percent in March 2013, from 1.5 percent recorded in February, as a result of higher prices for food, health, education and hotels (Trading Economies, 2013). This increasing in inflation will affect the country as money will start to lose its value. In other hand, poverty refers to the condition of not having the means to afford basis human needs such as clean water, nutrition, health care, clothing and shelter. Malaysia has adopted three concepts of poverty which is absolute poverty, absolute hardcore poverty and relative poverty. Malaysia has successfully eliminated extreme poverty and hunger. However, standard of living in peninsular Malaysia is differing from east Malaysia due to the poverty. All these three problem need to overcome immediately in order to provide a country with economic stability to its citizen. Thus, policy makers have to plays a crucial role to eradicate all these issues or problem.

Unemployment Unemployment as stated earlier is those at working age who is without work, but who are available for work at