https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Asia-Insight/Thailand-s-COVID-crisis-exposes-the-reality-of-2-unemployment?fbclid=IwAR2DUqyl5UfH9ywcsucmgCTTf_H4xuR9dzwYFVQeUPVnc8QlEqarXDVm2Kg
Thailand's COVID crisis exposes the reality of '2% unemployment'
Official figure masks increasing woes that could add to premier's headaches
Wanchalerm Noomuean yearns for the days he was known on Phuket as tour guide Jimmy, and every month showed hundreds of international visitors around the famous Thai island.
COVID-19 wiped out the 31-year-ld's job 15 months ago. While Jimmy remained on Phuket and the Thai government in July started allowing inoculated international visitors onto the island, their numbers are tiny and there is no demand for tour guides. The outlook for Jimmy getting back a job he loved isn't good.
"I forgot how to speak English already," he said, smiling wanly. To pay his bills, Jimmy sold off some jewelry and a car. He ekes out an income by occasionally cooking and selling pad thai noodles at the garage of a tenement he rents.
Jimmy is part of Thailand's growing ranks of unemployed or barely employed, though he wouldn't be counted in the official statistics on the jobless total because Thailand using International Labor Organization guidelines doesn't consider as unemployed a person who works at least one hour a week.
Also, more than half of the roughly 38 million in the Thai workforce, are in the informal sector and aren't included in jobless data. These factors help keep Thailand's official unemployment rate low seemingly unproblematic compared with regional peers and developed countries.
Although Thailand in July begin to let inoculated foreign tourists into Phuket, the number arriving is small and business remains poor.
But the low Thai unemployment rate masks a number of problems impacting the country's workforce, which has been badly hurt by COVID-19, and could create political headaches for the government, which is struggling to contain the raging coronavirus.
The latest published Thai unemployment rate, covering 2021's first quarter and announced in May, was 1.96%, a 12-year high. Danucha Pichayanan, secretary-eneral of the national economic planning agency, known as NESDC, described that rate was "drastically" higher than previous levels. (The rate was 1.03% in the first three months of 2020, when COVID-19 began to hammer the world, and 1.86% for the last quarter of 2020.) In May, the official unemployment rate was 3.8% in Singapore, 3.0% in Japan, 5.8 % in the United States and 7.7% in the Philippines.
Danucha said the Thai rate is "expected to rise again," and that is a certainty, given how COVID-19 case numbers (and deaths) have shot up in Thailand since May, with outbreaks of the delta variant. Daily confirmed cases reached 15,000 on average in the past few weeks.
Even if the unemployment figure remained low by world standards, it's a worry."For us, 2% unemployment rate is a crisis," said Tanit Sorat, vice chairman at the Employers' Confederation of Thai Trade and Industry (ECOTHAI).
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£££ Thailand's COVID crisis exposes the reality of '2% unemployment...บทความนิเคอิล่าสุดกั้บ
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Asia-Insight/Thailand-s-COVID-crisis-exposes-the-reality-of-2-unemployment?fbclid=IwAR2DUqyl5UfH9ywcsucmgCTTf_H4xuR9dzwYFVQeUPVnc8QlEqarXDVm2Kg
Thailand's COVID crisis exposes the reality of '2% unemployment'
Official figure masks increasing woes that could add to premier's headaches
Wanchalerm Noomuean yearns for the days he was known on Phuket as tour guide Jimmy, and every month showed hundreds of international visitors around the famous Thai island.
COVID-19 wiped out the 31-year-ld's job 15 months ago. While Jimmy remained on Phuket and the Thai government in July started allowing inoculated international visitors onto the island, their numbers are tiny and there is no demand for tour guides. The outlook for Jimmy getting back a job he loved isn't good.
"I forgot how to speak English already," he said, smiling wanly. To pay his bills, Jimmy sold off some jewelry and a car. He ekes out an income by occasionally cooking and selling pad thai noodles at the garage of a tenement he rents.
Jimmy is part of Thailand's growing ranks of unemployed or barely employed, though he wouldn't be counted in the official statistics on the jobless total because Thailand using International Labor Organization guidelines doesn't consider as unemployed a person who works at least one hour a week.
Also, more than half of the roughly 38 million in the Thai workforce, are in the informal sector and aren't included in jobless data. These factors help keep Thailand's official unemployment rate low seemingly unproblematic compared with regional peers and developed countries.
Although Thailand in July begin to let inoculated foreign tourists into Phuket, the number arriving is small and business remains poor.
But the low Thai unemployment rate masks a number of problems impacting the country's workforce, which has been badly hurt by COVID-19, and could create political headaches for the government, which is struggling to contain the raging coronavirus.
The latest published Thai unemployment rate, covering 2021's first quarter and announced in May, was 1.96%, a 12-year high. Danucha Pichayanan, secretary-eneral of the national economic planning agency, known as NESDC, described that rate was "drastically" higher than previous levels. (The rate was 1.03% in the first three months of 2020, when COVID-19 began to hammer the world, and 1.86% for the last quarter of 2020.) In May, the official unemployment rate was 3.8% in Singapore, 3.0% in Japan, 5.8 % in the United States and 7.7% in the Philippines.
Danucha said the Thai rate is "expected to rise again," and that is a certainty, given how COVID-19 case numbers (and deaths) have shot up in Thailand since May, with outbreaks of the delta variant. Daily confirmed cases reached 15,000 on average in the past few weeks.
Even if the unemployment figure remained low by world standards, it's a worry."For us, 2% unemployment rate is a crisis," said Tanit Sorat, vice chairman at the Employers' Confederation of Thai Trade and Industry (ECOTHAI).
หลังๆ ต้องอ่านเองครับ ไม่กล้าลงแล้ว กลัวเจอแบนครับ
ศก.ยังดี ครับ