The alumni and future graduates employability challenges post Covid-19 / Verity Chelsea Dangin ... [ et al.]

Covid-19 which started in Wuhan province, China has spread all over the world. The spread of the virus has had a major impact on the world’s economy. No country is unaffected. Therefore, all countries in the world are taking various strategic measures to control the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. Following that, most economic activities stopped and some industries did not operate. This epidemic has had a major impact on the Malaysia’s economic sector. Movement Control Order (MCO) has caused the economic activity to contract where consumers are no longer making purchases as usual and this causes supply to exceeding the demand for goods and services. Due to that, many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) were forced to shut the operations or bankruptcy because of the losses suffered by them. Here were reports that stated that some companies cannot run their businesses and having difficulties in paying the workers’ salaries in turn resulting in layoffs to minimize the costs operation. There were also some companies that had to freeze hiring new employees during this period as well as reducing the number of working hours for existing employees to allow their company to continue operating. In general, the industry losses a source of income and incurs costs to be financed. Directly, the industry took reactive action to reduce the operating costs through the method of reducing the number of employees.