Visualizing Malaysian States

Below is a motion chart of Malaysia's 13 states. Feel free to play around with the chart. The default visual shows that as of 2010, the largest contributor to national GDP (expressed in million ringgit) was Selangor, and the least was Perlis. On a per capita basis, however, Kuala Lumpur led while Kelantan had the lowest. The default colors show the female labor force participation rate with blue representing the lowest, and red the highest as shown in the top right. At 56.2% Pinang had the highest female labor force participation rate, while Perlis had the least (34.8%). Sabah had the highest unemployment rate (5.5%), while Melaka had the lowest (1%). There is generally a positive relationship between the share of the labor force with a tertiary degree and per capita incomes. In KL, the share of the labor force with tertiary education was 36.1% and per capita incomes were RM62,075 while only 14.1% of Sabah's labor force had a tertiary degree and per capita incomes averaging less than a third of KL's.

Data are from The Department of Statistics, Malaysia.

Malaysian States by Size

The figure represents each state's contribution to Malaysia's GDP, measured in 2005 prices from smallest to biggest. Close to 40% of Malaysia's GDP comes from Greater Kuala Lumpur (GKL), the region inclusive of Selangor and KL. It is no surprise then that one of the 12 key economic areas of focus in Malaysia's transformation program (see here) is GKL. Seven states contribute less than 5% each (the ones in red). The ones in orange contribute between 5 and 10%. A later post will show how these states compare on a per capita basis.

Data are from The Department of Statistics, Malaysia (DOSM)