Average monthly salary, wage of Malaysians up 4.1% to RM3,803 in 2025

This is against RM3,652 the previous year.

The median monthly salary and wage increased by 5.3% to RM2,940 from RM2,793 in 2024.

The statistics department said the total number of monthly salary and wage earners rose to 12.01 million, up from 11.96 million in 2024. Malaysians accounted for 10.38 million, or 86.4% of all full-time paid employees.

“The services sector, which represents 71.5%, was the main contributor to the increase in the number of wage earners, rising by 1.8% to 7.42 million people.

“Meanwhile, mining and quarrying had the highest average monthly salary and wage at RM6,175, followed by services (RM3,993), manufacturing (RM3,357), construction (RM3,188) and agriculture (RM2,575),” the department said in a statement today.

In terms of skills, it said skilled workers, who accounted for 36.6% of all salary earners, recorded the highest average monthly salary and wage at RM5,799, compared with RM5,582 in 2024.

The semi-skilled category, which accounted for 55.6% of salary earners, recorded a 4.2% increase in average salary to RM2,714 from RM2,604, while the low-skilled category rose by 2.6% to RM2,184 from RM2,128.

“Selangor recorded the highest share of salary earners, at 25.6% of the total number of paid Malaysian workers, followed by Johor (13.6%) and Sarawak (7.6%),” it added.

Five states recorded average monthly salaries and wages above the national level: Putrajaya (RM5,417), Kuala Lumpur (RM4,955), Selangor (RM4,258), Penang (RM3,912) and Labuan (RM3,887).