Malaysia was 28 last year but has improved to 22 among 63 countries in the ranking done by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD).
Switzerland won first placing followed by Denmark and Norway. Singapore was placed at 13, one spot below the US.
“Compared with last year, Singapore keeps the same position in the ranking and Malaysia moves up by six,” IMD said.
Malaysia’s progress in the ranking was due to investment in education to develop its homegrown skilled workforce, IMD added.
Malaysia beat countries such as the United Kingdom (23), France (25), Taiwan (27), Japan (29), China (39), Thailand (42), Indonesia (45) and the Philippines (55).
IMD said the ranking assessed “the status and development of competencies necessary for enterprises and the economy to achieve long-term value creation. It does so by using a set of indicators which measure the development, retention and attraction of a domestic and international highly-skilled workforce”.
The ranking is based on performance in three main categories: investment and development, appeal, and readiness.
In terms of investment in and development of home-grown talent, Malaysia is ranked 17, ahead of the US, Japan, France, Korea, UK and even Singapore which is ranked 34.
Under the extent to which a country taps into the overseas talent pool category, Malaysia placed 26, much below Singapore which is placed 15.
Malaysia is ranked 24 in terms of the availability of skills and competencies in the talent pool.
It is ranked 11 in terms of skilled labour availability and 21 for financial skills readiness.
Under the category of whether the educational system meets the needs of a competitive economy, Malaysia is ranked 31 and whether science is sufficiently emphasised in schools, it is ranked 24. As for government expenditure on education per student, it ranks 31.
However, it is ranked lowly at 41 for performance in Programmes for International Students Assessments or PISA, an evaluation of how good a country’s pupils are in mathematics, science and reading.
Since 2014, IMD has been assessing how the 63 economies develop, attract and retain highly-skilled professionals.
“The 2018 edition of the IMD World Talent Ranking confirms the trends we identified in the past: the most successful countries in talent competitiveness are mainly European, mid-size economies, with high levels of investment in education and quality of life. Furthermore, results suggest that the wealth of the country is not the only significant driver of talent competitiveness.
“In fact, indicators of social progress as well as the quality of institutions (e.g., adherence to the rule of law) are a strong foundation for attracting highly skilled professionals from the international talent pool.”