cariLocum

The 2025 Locum Pay Report

What does locum work in Malaysia really pay?

We crunched 24,901 locum job postings spanning 14 states and 2,114 clinics. The headline finding: Malaysia's locum market is startlingly uniform — almost everyone is paid RM40/hour. Here's the story the data tells.

Median pay / hour

RM40

Mean RM42.15

Avg session length

7.07h

~RM298 total

Postings analysed

24,901

From 25,381 raw

States covered

220 cities

Heads up: all data here comes purely from carilocum.com public job postings. It's a useful sample, but it doesn't cover every locum role in Malaysia and may not reflect on-the-ground negotiated rates, hospital posts, or private arrangements. Treat it as a directional snapshot, not gospel.

Chapter 01

The big picture

The median locum shift in Malaysia pays RM40/hour, with a mean of RM42.15. Notice how close those two numbers are — that's the data telling us the market is genuinely uniform, not skewed by a long tail of high earners. Here's the full distribution.

Hourly pay rate distribution

Number of postings per RM5 pay bucket. Most listings cluster tightly around RM40–RM45.

16,394

6,318

1,890

105

100

x-axis: hourly rate (RM). The single tallest bar is RM40 — by far the most common rate in the market.

Chapter 02

Geography barely moves the needle

Across 11 states with statistically meaningful samples, the gap between the highest paying state (Kelantan, RM46.76/hr) and the lowest (Negeri Sembilan, RM40.93/hr) is just RM5.83/hr. The thin black line on each bar marks the median — they all sit on RM40.

Average pay per hour, by state

Sorted highest to lowest. State sample size in parentheses.

Kelantan
n=71
RM47
med RM50
Johor
n=2318
RM44
med RM45
Perak
n=701
RM43
med RM45
Pahang
n=368
RM42
med RM40
Selangor
n=14669
RM42
med RM40
Pulau Pinang
n=479
RM42
med RM40
Kuala Lumpur
n=4217
RM42
med RM40
Melaka
n=143
RM41
med RM40
Kedah
n=296
RM41
med RM40
Putrajaya
n=294
RM41
med RM40
Negeri Sembilan
n=1291
RM41
med RM40

Top 10 cities by average hourly pay

Cities with at least 30 postings.

1
Pasir Mas
Kelantan
RM50.94/hr
32 postings
2
Batang Kali
Selangor
RM48.94/hr
108 postings
3
Kulai
Johor
RM47.86/hr
84 postings
4
Taiping
Perak
RM46.43/hr
42 postings
5
Muar
Johor
RM46.34/hr
41 postings
6
Gelang Patah
Johor
RM46.06/hr
52 postings
7
Pulau Indah
Selangor
RM45.78/hr
32 postings
8
Skudai
Johor
RM45.46/hr
163 postings
9
Raub
Pahang
RM45.00/hr
46 postings
10
Beranang
Selangor
RM44.73/hr
75 postings

Where the demand actually is

Top 10 cities by posting volume — the biggest locum markets.

1
Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur
3,963 posts
RM42/hr avg
2
Shah Alam
Selangor
2,543 posts
RM42/hr avg
3
Petaling Jaya
Selangor
1,474 posts
RM41/hr avg
4
Puchong
Selangor
1,435 posts
RM42/hr avg
5
Klang
Selangor
1,270 posts
RM41/hr avg
6
Johor Bahru
Johor
801 posts
RM44/hr avg
7
Kajang
Selangor
748 posts
RM42/hr avg
8
Seri Kembangan
Selangor
617 posts
RM44/hr avg
9
Batu Caves
Selangor
591 posts
RM42/hr avg
10
Sepang
Selangor
566 posts
RM41/hr avg

Chapter 03

When does the work show up?

Locum demand isn't evenly distributed across the week. Saturday is the busiest day with 5,250 shifts, and the weekend pays a small but real premium over weekdays.

Shifts posted, by day of week

Saturday and Sunday account for 39% of all postings.

3,295

2,592

2,553

2,767

3,907

5,250

4,518

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Sat

Sun

Average pay, by day of week

Sunday edges ahead — but the spread is under RM1/hr. Median pay is RM40 every day of the week.

RM42.13

RM41.94

RM42.00

RM42.08

RM41.95

RM42.25

RM42.50

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Sat

Sun

Average hourly pay over time

Monthly average pay rate based on the date the post was published. Locum rates have been remarkably flat — there's no obvious upward trend.

Chapter 04

The night-shift mirage

Our first cut of this data flagged a striking finding: night shifts (9pm–5am) appeared to pay around RM91/hr, more than double daytime rates. It looked like the headline of the report. Then we read the source posts — and the “RM250” or “RM320” values weren't hourly. They were total pay for the entire overnight shift, mislabelled in the listing as the hourly rate. Once we cap the data at a plausible RM100/hr ceiling and exclude those whole-shift totals, the night-shift “premium” vanishes:

Pay by shift start time (after cleanup)

Mean and median are nearly identical across all four shift types. Night shifts pay the same as morning shifts.

Morning (5am-12pm)
11,618 posts
RM41.97
med RM40.00
Afternoon (12pm-5pm)
5,553 posts
RM42.55
med RM40.00
Evening (5pm-9pm)
7,365 posts
RM42.14
med RM40.00
Night (9pm-5am)
327 posts
RM42.26
med RM40.00

The thin vertical line marks the median. Lesson: always read the source data before celebrating a “finding.”

Chapter 05

The incentive myth

Plenty of clinics advertise “incentives” — bonuses, transport, perks. On the data, it barely matters: postings that mention incentives pay only RM0.25/hr more on average, and the medians are identical at RM40. As a pay signal, it's essentially noise.

With vs without incentives

With incentives
14,000 posts
RM42.26
med RM40.00
Without incentives
10,901 posts
RM42.01
med RM40.00

Pay by shift duration

Even broken out by shift length, hourly pay is essentially flat — the median sits on RM40 regardless.

Short (≤4h)
5,880 posts
RM41.94
med RM40.00
Medium (4-6h)
6,677 posts
RM42.32
med RM40.00
Standard (6-9h)
7,255 posts
RM42.26
med RM40.00
Long (9h+)
4,690 posts
RM41.95
med RM40.00

Chapter 06

Where a single shift earns the most

Hourly rate is one thing — total take-home per session is another. Multiplying pay rate by shift length, here are the cities where one locum session pays the most on average.

1
Sungai Pelek
Selangor
RM533
59 sessions
2
Kulai
Johor
RM452
83 sessions
3
Gemas
Negeri Sembilan
RM441
50 sessions
4
Skudai
Johor
RM430
163 sessions
5
Tanjong Malim
Perak
RM425
115 sessions
6
Bentong
Pahang
RM419
101 sessions
7
Beranang
Selangor
RM407
74 sessions
8
Simpang Renggam
Johor
RM406
40 sessions
9
Kampar
Perak
RM406
168 sessions
10
Bidor
Perak
RM396
68 sessions

Average total earnings per session = pay rate × shift length.

Chapter 07

The most active hirers

A small number of clinics post a disproportionate share of locum opportunities. Here are the most active employers in the dataset — useful to know if you're looking for steady work in a particular area.

Gender-preferenced postings, by state

Share of postings that specify a preferred gender (most commonly female).

Putrajaya
27.9% female
27.9%
Pahang
18.5% female
18.5%
Kedah
13.9% female
13.9%
Melaka
13.3% female
13.3%
Selangor
12.3% female
12.3%
Kuala Lumpur
10.7% female
10.7%
Johor
10.1% female
10.1%
Pulau Pinang
9.2% female
9.2%

In summary

So what does it all mean?

After 24,901 cleaned postings, the picture is simpler than we expected: Malaysia's locum market is essentially one number.

RM40/hour is the market

The median is RM40. The mean is RM42.15. Whether you slice by state, day of week, shift time, or duration, the median barely budges off RM40. That's an unusually uniform labour market.

Geography & timing don't pay much

The gap between the highest and lowest paying state is roughly RM6/hr. Weekend “premiums” are under RM1/hr. If you're chasing a higher rate by chasing a city, the data says don't bother.

The night-shift premium was a mirage

Our headline finding evaporated once we read the source posts — the “RM250 night shifts” were whole-shift totals, not hourly rates. Always sanity-check a striking number against the raw data before publishing it.

Treat advertised rates as a signal, not gospel

Listings show what clinics post — not what doctors negotiate, get paid in cash bonuses, or actually take home. Use this report as a market baseline, then talk to people doing the work.

Methodology & data quality

Source: 25,381 locum job postings scraped from public carilocum.com listings.
We dropped postings with implausible pay rates (below RM20/hr or above RM100/hr) and any that couldn't be matched to a Malaysian state. Final sample: 24,901 postings.
The RM100/hr ceiling is deliberately strict. On manual inspection, almost every value above RM100 turned out to be the total pay for a whole overnight shift (e.g. “RM250 for 11pm – 8am”) being mislabelled as the hourly rate. Leaving those in massively inflates the night-shift average — see Chapter 04.
State and city averages exclude any group with fewer than 30 postings to avoid misleading small-sample numbers. We report both mean and median because the medians are more robust to remaining data quality issues.
Session length is calculated from advertised start and end times. Shifts crossing midnight are handled correctly.
These numbers describe what clinics advertise, not what individual doctors necessarily end up taking home — direct negotiations, no-shows and last-minute changes are not visible here.

Generated 19 April 2026. Want raw figures or have a different cut you'd like to see? Get in touch.