Now is not a good time to be looking for a job in Southeast Asia as economic growth cools down across the region, according to FT Confidential Research (FTCR) – a unit of the Financial Times.

The FTCR expects unemployment to rise in the ASEAN region this year after significant job losses in 2015.

An FTCR survey of jobseekers in five of the region’s biggest economies shows that more than half of them are finding it either hard or very hard to land a new job.

A job interview at a job fair in Viet Nam (Photo: VNA)

The survey was conducted in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam during the last quarter of 2015, with 1,000 respondents in each country.

Malaysians in particular were pessimistic about their prospects. About two-thirds of the respondents described the job market as tough.

There have been lay-offs across the economy. CIMB, Malaysia’s second-largest bank, cut 4,000 jobs last year. Several other banks also downsized as loan growth slacked off.

Malaysia Airlines fired 6,000 employees last year as it cut costs after years in the red and struggled to recover from the loss of two of its aircraft. Malaysia’s oil and gas industry is also shedding jobs.

Among those still in work, the survey found that a large minority of ASEAN workers were worried about job security. Malaysians still stood out with 6 percent saying they felt very insecure, followed by Thai workers at 4 percent.

(Source: VNA)