Education pays twice the national median.
The median worker in education took home RM5,990 a month in 2025. Across all industries the median was RM2,940. That is 2.04× — the widest gap between any single industry and the national figure.
Education has held the top of the ladder every year since 2011. In 2010 it tied with mining at 1.87×, and it has widened since. The industry employs 952,300 people, 9.2% of everyone the survey covers, so this is not a small elite pulling a statistic around.
The floor of this chart is the national median, not zero. The climb is the distance from RM2,940 to RM5,990.
| National median | RM2,940 |
|---|---|
| Education median | RM5,990 |
| Ratio | 2.04× |
Two in three workers are in an industry that pays below the median.
65.8% of the 10.38 million employees the survey covers work in an industry whose median sits below the national median. That is not a paradox. It is what happens when a handful of high-paying industries pull the middle up.
Manufacturing employs 18.9% of the workforce at 0.91× the national median. Trade employs 17.0% at 0.70×. Those two industries alone hold more than a third of everyone counted, and both sit under the line.
The split is a share of employees covered by the survey, not of total employment. Self-employed and informal workers are outside it.
| Below the median | 65.8% |
|---|---|
| At or above | 34.2% |
It narrowed for a decade, broke in 2020, and never got back to 2019.
Measured as the ratio of the best-paid industry's median to the worst-paid, the spread fell from 3.59 in 2010 to 3.18 in 2019 — a decade of slow convergence. Then in 2020 it jumped to 3.80 in a single year.
It has since closed to 3.30. That is below where the decade started, but above the 2019 floor. The 2020 jump is a real fall in pay, not a change in who was counted: covered employees rose 2.8% that year while the national median fell 15.0%, from RM2,442 to RM2,076.
The middle of the decade is not a straight line. The spread sat between 3.39 and 3.72 from 2010 to 2016 before the slide to 2019.
| 2010 | 3.59 |
|---|---|
| 2013 | 3.72 |
| 2016 | 3.62 |
| 2019 | 3.18 |
| 2020 | 3.80 |
| 2025 | 3.30 |
The public sector climbed. Resource and finance fell.
Between 2010 and 2025, ten industries moved up the ladder relative to the national median and nine moved down. The biggest climb was health, from 1.33× to 1.69×. Public administration went from 1.36× to 1.57×.
The biggest fall was real estate, 1.67× to 1.29×, followed by mining (1.87× to 1.57×) and finance (1.67× to 1.42×). The industries that lost ground are the ones that paid a premium in 2010 for resources, property and finance.
Ratios are against the national median in the same year, which cancels inflation. No claim of real growth is made here.
| Health | 1.33 → 1.69 |
|---|---|
| Public admin | 1.36 → 1.57 |
| Finance | 1.67 → 1.42 |
| Mining | 1.87 → 1.57 |
| Real estate | 1.67 → 1.29 |
Four industries carry more than half the wage bill.
Multiply each industry's share of employees by its median wage and you get a rough wage bill. Four industries account for 55.6% of it: education 17.4%, manufacturing 15.9%, public administration 11.2% and trade 11.0%.
They get there two different ways. Education and public administration pay well and employ many. Manufacturing and trade employ the most people in the country and pay below the median. A block's footprint is its share of employees, its height is its pay, and its volume is what it contributes.
This is a weighted headcount, not a payroll total. It uses median wage as a stand-in for the average, which understates industries with long high-earner tails.
| Education | 17.4% |
|---|---|
| Manufacturing | 15.9% |
| Public admin | 11.2% |
| Trade | 11.0% |
| Four together | 55.6% |
Where pay is lowest, the average sits furthest above the typical wage.
In agriculture the mean wage is 1.42× the median. In construction it is 1.40×. In public administration it is 1.05×, and in education 1.06×.
A wide mean-to-median ratio means a long tail of high earners inside the industry. The industries with the lowest typical pay are also the ones where the typical wage tells you least about what people actually take home.
Agriculture's median is RM1,813 and its mean RM2,575. The RM762 between them is the tail.
| Agriculture | 1.42× |
|---|---|
| Construction | 1.40× |
| Education | 1.06× |
| Public admin | 1.05× |