3 hours ago, Mattd said:

This is indeed correct, however, 90% just do not bother, a good example is my ex. wife's family, her two sisters had 5 boys between them, none of these got past the age of 13 at school, none of them have ever worked or even make any attempt to work, not claiming anything etc. I would imagine that is likely to be representative of a good percentage of Issan, where the unemployment is probably reasonably high, though due to no other reason than not particularly wanting to work.

I agree..tho' primarily with the village/urban poor males in Isaan

They know that their grannies,mothers,aunts,sisters (and  eventually daughters) will support them through the absolute horror of assuming any sort of self responsibility for their self entitled laziness.

 

I ended up having absolutely no sympathy for them whatsoever although I would (of course) exclude the sick,the halt,the lame and the crippled from that judgement.

It seems there have been many jobs created just for the sake of. For example, the staff that hand out tickets in store car and motorbike parking lots. 

 

How many times have we been to stores and service centres, seen more staff than customers.

 

Also many Thai people work cash in hand jobs and therefore are neither registered as unemployed or employed, so it would be impossible to accurately measure employment statistics in Thailand.

4 hours ago, cyberfarang said:

It seems there have been many jobs created just for the sake of. For example, the staff that hand out tickets in store car and motorbike parking lots. 

 

IMO this is better than having people sit at home on the dole like in the West.

These debates about unemployment figures are getting tiresome, the OP has been involved in them previously and is aware of the situation, a few simple reminders:

 

The population here is circa 67 million, the workforce is only 29 million, those cars on the streets and people in the banks he mentions, they mostly come from the 38 million not in the workforce!

 

Unemployment levels here as measured by sampling, the same...yawn, this is getting so repetitive...the same method used to assess unemployment and other levels in many countries around the world including the US - google it.

 

At any point in time in any country, around 5% of the population is in the process of changing jobs hence the official headline figures are +5%.

 

Unemployment levels are calculated against the workforce, NOT the total population.

 

Only about 2% of the population pays tax through their employers, the rest either don't earn enough to pay tax or pay tax via a tax return at year end.

 

Social security payments can be made by the self and unemployed, for that reason social security payment receipts do not reflect employment levels.

 

On 6/25/2018 at 1:08 AM, tropo said:

I liked your post for the most part, but it's a pity you spoiled it with a shot at Trump. Enough already. We don't all live in the US, you know... and opinions on Trump differ.

Tropo, you are absolutely correct.

 

The most recent president has nothing to do with the distorted statistics on all kinds of government data. This type of self-serving perjury on my government's part has been going on for decades, and will only get worse as the truth becomes more alarming.

 

Anybody interested in realistic numbers can visit a web site called 'shadow stats' managed by an ex-gov statistician who decided years ago to resign and to publish verifiable statistics based on actual data sources that are not used to skew the picture.

 

As for taking 'shots' at Trump, it is indeed a futile gesture as even if you owned an ammo company you couldn't afford all you would need. It would turn into a full time job.

 

BTW, you don't have to live in America to get a daily dose of government propaganda shoved down your throat.. All governments lie to their citizen-sheeple.

11 hours ago, RocketDog said:

 

Anybody interested in realistic numbers can visit a web site called 'shadow stats' managed by an ex-gov statistician who decided years ago to resign and to publish verifiable statistics based on actual data sources that are not used to skew the picture.

 

That would be John Williams Shadow Stats.

He actually uses the official calculation methods as they were in the 1990s, before the heavy manipulations started.

Thus, if these methods were still used, unalduterated, the US unemployment rate would stand above 20%!...and not below 4%!

Edited July 3, 20188 yr by Brunolem