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February was a bad month for job seekers in the region. The world's economy continued to be battered by bad news - still with no end in sight - and job seeker confidence in the four countries, measured by the JobStreet.com Employee Confidence Index - declined correspondingly.

We wouldn't want to delve into the bad news but two pieces of news stood out in the last couple of week.

In Malaysia, the Human Resources Minister said that the number of temporarily laid-off workers rose to 80,000 and the number retrenched was about 15,000. "The electrical, electronics and textile manufacturing are most badly hit," he said. And in Singapore, as many as 10,000 workers could be retrenched in the first three months of this year. Such news only add to the worries over the local job market.

So how did the JobStreet.com Employee Confidence Index perform in February?

• In Malaysia, the JobStreet ECI went down by another 1.8 points to end the month at 43.1 points. It had ended January on 44.9 points.
• In Singapore, the JobStreet ECI fell to 39.5 points, which was a decline of 2.9 points from the January index of 42.4 points.
• In the Philippines, the JobStreet ECI dropped steeply by 3.9 points to 54.9 points.
• And in India, the weak job market continued to affect the JobStreet ECI which finished at 56.5 points, lower by 2.1 points from the 58.6 points registered in the previous month.

The JobStreet.com Employment Confident Index is a measure of job seeker confidence in finding a job in the countries where we hold our monthly polls.