Top Jobs in Malaysia Then and Now (Nov 2013)

For those that want to pursue high paying jobs, Salary Explorer provided a list of the top paying jobs in Malaysia. The ranking is based on the average yearly salaries.

1. Pilot (Airlines/ Aviation/ Aerospace/ Defense) RM420,000
2. Strategy Director (Business Planning) RM360,000
3. Senior Accountant (Accounting and Finance) RM360,000
4. Materials Engineer (Engineering) RM336,000
5. Government Affairs Director (Government and Defence) RM324,000
6. Regional Director (Executive and Management) RM318,667
7. Chief Operating Officer (Executive and Management) RM302,800
8. Financial Director (Accounting and Finance) RM300,000
9. Regional Manager (Banking) RM294,000
10. Development Manager (I.T.) RM293,900

The list is mainly populated by high ranking executives and this can take years to reach once you enter the workforce, especially if you’ve just graduated from college. Even pilots who are just starting in their careers do not earn such high salaries. The RM35,000 cited by Salary Explorer is probably the salary of Captains that fly commercial planes and have probably been flying for more than five years.
The Sun also did a feature on the 10 popular graduate careers in Malaysia two years ago. Included in the list were:

• Network Engineers
• Sales Executives/ Marketing Executives
• Accountants
• Electrical Engineer/ Electronics Engineer
• HR Executive
• Software Engineer
• IT Consultants
• Telecommunication Engineers
• Corporate Bankers
• Petroleum Engineers

What is noticeably missing in the Sun’s list are pilots. Aside from the obvious reason that not everyone can be a pilot and that there are not a lot of jobs for pilots as compared to the much broader field of accounting, would-be pilots will have to spend anywhere from RM100,000 to RM200,000 to become a commercial pilot. Not a lot of people can afford to get the right training to become one. The list shows that a lot of people chose to become engineers in Malaysia, but if you look again at Salary Explorer’s list, you will see that their potential to earn is not that high, given how material engineers are the only ones in the engineering field who were able to get into the top 10 in terms of salary.

Comparing Salaries in Malaysia to the U.S.

Pilots and other executives get paid a lot in Malaysia but is this the same case with other countries? If we look at the top paying jobs in the U.S. from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics in 2010 that was published in 2012, we get a different picture. Here’s the top 10 paid jobs in the U.S. according to BLS data.

1. Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons – $166,400 per year (RM529,734)
2. Physicians and Surgeons – $166,400 per year (RM529,734)
3. Orthodontists – $166,400 per year (RM529,734)
4. Chief Executives – $165,080 per year (RM525,532)
5. Dentists, All Other Specialists – $ 161,020 per year (RM512,607)
6. Dentists, General – $141,040 per year (RM449,000)
7. Judges, Magistrate Judges and Magistrates – $119,270 per year (RM379,457)
8. Architectural and Engineering Managers – $119,260 per year (RM379,664)
9. Prosthodontists – $118,400 per year (RM376,926)
10. Podiatrists – $118,030 per year (RM375,748)

Pilots are not even featured in the top 20 ranks for median salaries in the U.S. for that time period. What is clear from the data is that healthcare professionals, like doctors and dentists, are some of the highest paid professionals in the U.S., and that gives us a completely different picture from what we see in Malaysia where executives in a wide array of industries receive the highest pay. Healthcare in general has seen a privatisation in recent years in the U.S. which “Obamacare” is trying to reverse, (to a degree).

Source : www.businesstoday.net.my November 2013