The number of Malaysians who were employed in 2013 rose to 13.21 million from 12.72 million the year before, according to the Malaysian Manpower Investigative Report 2013.

The report, released by the Malaysian Statistics Department and circulated Wednesday, stated that the national labour market improved with labour participation rate at 67 percent in 2013 or 13.63 million people of the 20.34 million people of working age.

"Out of that, 13.21 million people were employed while 424,600 were jobless in 2013. In other words, the unemployment rate in Malaysia was at 3.1 percent out of the total labour force," the report stated.

The main reason people outside the labour force did not look for employment was because they were involved in house work or were still studying.

The report also said the labour force participation rate of women in 2013 rose to 52.4 percent from 49.5 percent the previous year.

In terms of ethnic composition, the Malays continued to dominate the labour force with 46.1 percent in 2013 compared to 45.7 percent the year before.

The Chinese were at 22.7 percent and Indians, 6.4 percent.

Overall, the percentage of Malaysians who were employed in 2013 was 86.6 percent, up by 0.1 percentage point compared to the figure in 2012, while the number of non-citizens who were employed dropped by 0.1 percentage point to 13.4 percent.

According to the report, the rate of labour force participation by citizens and non-citizens increased from the previous year, with each recording 65.1 percent and 82.9 percent respectively.

The report also said the employment was mostly in the services sector with 7.65 million (57.5 percent), up by 0.4 percentage point compared to the figure in 2012.

Other major sectors such as construction and agriculture, forestry and fisheries also recorded an increase in the percentage of employment, up by 0.3 and 0.1 percentage point to 9.4 and 12.7 percent in 2013.

On the reverse, the manufacturing sector recorded a drop of 0.7 percentage point to 16.8 percent compared to the previous year.

The subsectors which contributed to the highest increase in employment rates were the human health and social work activities (3.7 percent), followed by public administration and defence, and mandatory social security activities (5.8 percent).