'Thai unemployment at nearly 10 per cent' due to Covid-19

[webfact]

'Thai unemployment at nearly 10 per cent' due to Covid-19

By THE NATION

 

 

The unemployment rate of Thai people in Bangkok and nearby provinces increased to 9.6 per cent due to the impact of Covid-19 and the lockdown measures, Kasikorn Research Centre said.

 

The research was conducted from May 21 and 28, the centre said.

 

The centre revealed that 61.4 per cent of researched people were unemployed due to the virus crisis and lockdown measures. The other 38.6 per cent were unemployed due to other reasons.

 

The unemployment rate would hit its highest point in the second quarter, before gradually decreasing in the latter part of this year when the state of emergency is relaxed and if a second Covid-19 wave does not happen.

 

Some 6.4 per cent of employed persons said that their companies would possibly close down due to the pandemic, while another 17.4 per cent informed that they could lay off staff in this situation and they would be included.

 

Most households facing the threat of unemployment earned lesser than Bt20,000 per month, the research centre added.

 

The researchers, furthermore, found that 95.5 per cent of researched households have been affected by the social distancing. Among them, 52.5 per cent had lower earnings.

 

The centre said that 25.4 per cent of people wanted the government to stimulate and help the economy recover, after the remedial measures implemented previously end.

 

Source: https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30389095

 

-- © Copyright The Nation Thailand 2020-06-05

 

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[DrTuner]

I trust Kasikorn more than the usurpers' "government". Sad state of state affairs.

[Canuck1966]

Could all have been for nothing

 

https://unherd.com/2020/06/karl-friston-up-to-80-not-even-susceptible-to-covid-19/?=frlh

[johnray]

More like 95 percent.  No one has a stable job at the moment.

[BritManToo]

4 minutes ago, johnray said:

More like 95 percent.  No one has a stable job at the moment.

I'm outside the tourist areas ...... middle class moobaan of 250 houses, 99.9% Thai, nobody has claimed they lost their job. It's the people at the bottom who scrabble to make money who are in the deep doo-doo.

A couple of house-wives have started take out food business with GRAB, seem to be doing well.

[Mr Meeseeks]

5 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

I'm outside the tourist areas ...... middle class moobaan of 250 houses, 99.9% Thai, nobody has claimed they lost their job. It's the people at the bottom who scrabble to make money who are in the deep doo-doo.

A couple of house-wives have started take out food business with GRAB, seem to be doing well.

Same in my moo baan also.

 

No panic here on the Eastern seaboard. 

 

Queues of pimps, sex-workers and other people totally dependent on tourist income in Pattaya but business as usual everywhere else round here.

[Trillian]

2 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

Same in my moo baan also.

 

No panic here on the Eastern seaboard. 

 

Queues of pimps, sex-workers and other people totally dependent on tourist income in Pattaya but business as usual everywhere else round here.

"Pimps"....! You don't know what you're looking at.

[steven100]

9.6 %  ......          it's not April 1st .  

 

no way is it only nine percent, I would haze at a guess more like 30%.

 

 

 

 

 

[Brunolem]

10 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

Same in my moo baan also.

 

No panic here on the Eastern seaboard. 

 

Queues of pimps, sex-workers and other people totally dependent on tourist income in Pattaya but business as usual everywhere else round here.

Same in Sisaket-Ubon area in Isaan, markets, supermarkets and shopping centers (Central Ubon) busy as usual.

 

In the villages, nobody's complaining, and people are busy buying and selling cows at their highest price in years...

[Cake Monster]

15 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

Same in my moo baan also.

 

No panic here on the Eastern seaboard. 

 

Queues of pimps, sex-workers and other people totally dependent on tourist income in Pattaya but business as usual everywhere else round here.

I am sure that " business as usual " is all going to change over the next 6 Months or so.

Many of the Manufacturing Companies on the Eastern Seaboard have yet to feel the full effect upon them of the Covid19 outbreak.

Companies will now be making to " put to stock " items they deem will be needed in the near future, but this policy for keeping Staff employed will only last so long.

After which time, the lay offs start in earnest, and with the Global Auto market in the can, and the Thai Manufacturing base relying upon it so heavily, there are going to be many lay offs , not just from the Large Companies, but also the smaller ones in the supply chains

 

 

[JusticeGB]

Amazing the official statistics of the unemployment in Thailand showed an unemployment rate of only 1% in March 2020. Obviously something wrong somewhere!

[Mr Meeseeks]

29 minutes ago, Trillian said:

"Pimps"....! You don't know what you're looking at.

30 years and a couple of billion Baht businesses gone public says different bub.

[Mr Meeseeks]

13 minutes ago, Cake Monster said:

I am sure that " business as usual " is all going to change over the next 6 Months or so.

Many of the Manufacturing Companies on the Eastern Seaboard have yet to feel the full effect upon them of the Covid19 outbreak.

Companies will now be making to " put to stock " items they deem will be needed in the near future, but this policy for keeping Staff employed will only last so long.

After which time, the lay offs start in earnest, and with the Global Auto market in the can, and the Thai Manufacturing base relying upon it so heavily, there are going to be many lay offs , not just from the Large Companies, but also the smaller ones in the supply chains

 

 

There will certainly be repercussions but I think Thailand won't be affected as badly as some may wish it to be. 

 

Thailand has very strong economic fundamentals, despite being heavily reliant on tourism.

[Brunolem]

49 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

30 years and a couple of billion Baht businesses gone public says different bub.

Pimp business going public?

[BritManToo]

54 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

Thailand has very strong economic fundamentals, despite being heavily reliant on tourism.

I think the important thing is Thailand grows more food than it can eat.

Everywhere you walk or look there's food to be gathered.

Nothing else really matters.

[Mr Meeseeks]

 

9 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

Pimp business going public?

Haters gonna hate.

[Geoffggi]

Should this read 10% IN EMPLOYMENT........LOL

[PatOngo]

They will all soon be gainfully employed, watching rice grow!

[Don Mega]

The people that makes up the numbers, were they all legit tax paying employees or does the numbers include those why are paid cash in hand "off the books" ?

[prakhonchai nick]

Many countries would be delighted with just a 10% unemployment rate.

 

Most of those in my village were unemployed (and unemployable) long before Covid-19 came along.

[Kerryd]

Not sure why people seem to think that most of the country is unemployed for some reason.

It is mainly the tourism and hospitality (and sport/music) industries that are affected. Most manufacturing, agricultural and office work has carried on since the beginning.

Hotels, restaurants, bars, sports/music venues and tourist attractions had the most closures (and thus unemployment) and remember (from all the many threads in the past) tourism makes up less than 20 % of the economy. Many of those businesses are starting to re-open already so the unemployment numbers will start to drop.

I'm not sure how they calculate those numbers in Thailand though.

When I see something that says the number was only 1% (in Thailand) in March, it makes me wonder just how wildly inaccurate the numbers must be in Thailand. Only 1% unemployment in a nation of 66.5(+) million people ? 

Canada's percentage in April was 13% ! The USA was 14% in April but down to 13% in May. The UK supposedly had just 3.9% in Jan/Feb and Australia was 5.9-6.9 during Mar/Apr.
Meanwhile, Cambodia is listed at 0.4 % !
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/thailand/unemployment-rate#:~:text=Thailand's Unemployment Rate dropped to,an average rate of 1.16 %.
https://www.bot.or.th/English/MonetaryPolicy/MonetPolicyComittee/MPR/BOX_MRP/BOXMPR_EN_March2019_01.pdf
https://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/work/466226/why-thailand-unemployment-rate-is-ridiculously-low
https://www.economy.com/thailand/unemployment-rate

I was shocked as I thought Canada's rate was probably more in the 7-8% range, especially with all the BS that's been in the news about all the "imported labour" they are using in different industries. Apparently it helps your bottom line more if you import people from the Philippines to work for minimum wage rather than pay more to hire Canadians.
Of course, one of the problems is so many Canadians think that they should be paid premium wages for menial labour jobs and will turn down work they think is "beneath" them. Spoilt by decades of government handouts and welfare, many of them seem to think that "working" itself is beneath them.

One of the links above mentions that up to 64% of Thailand's workforce is "self employed" and not on the social system. People like moto-taxi drivers, street vendors, a lot of farmers even (they didn't mention bar girls or ladyboy pickpockets specifically though).

When it comes to "numbers" in Thailand, take them with a grain of salt. A lot of numbers are "massaged" to make them look better (or not as bad) as the situation dictates.
 

[elgenon]

Wow! Thailand IS amazing to have a rate that low. Good job Mr General. Good PR Mr General!

[Brunolem]

6 minutes ago, Kerryd said:

When it comes to "numbers" in Thailand, take them with a grain of salt. A lot of numbers are "massaged" to make them look better (or not as bad) as the situation dictates.
 

Not only Thailand, but all of them, and especially China and the US. 

 

The first analysis from the US employment miraculous report are coming: what a load of BS! 

 

The BLS, which prepares the report, has already admitted an "error" that, if corrected, would move the unemployment rate by 3%!!!

 

And that's not all... 

 

These massaged (fake) stats are totally worthless. 

[248900_1469958220]

19 hours ago, Canuck1966 said:

Could all have been for nothing

 

https://unherd.com/2020/06/karl-friston-up-to-80-not-even-susceptible-to-covid-19/?=frlh

Careful now....going against the narrative....tut tut....

[DualSportBiker]

18 hours ago, JusticeGB said:

Amazing the official statistics of the unemployment in Thailand showed an unemployment rate of only 1% in March 2020. Obviously something wrong somewhere!

Thai unemployment has been around the 1% mark for decades. I saw a speech by Aphisit to combined chambers of commerce while he was PM. The regional chief economist at ING asked him how Thailand would power the growth he forecast when there was nobody to fill the roles. It's been well known for years that Thailand faces a choice to open up to immigrant workers or to automate various processes so that those employees can do other tasks that are harder to automate. The lack of automation and the belief that throwing people at a problem has been a restriction on growth here since the early naughties.

[CLW]

19 hours ago, JusticeGB said:

Amazing the official statistics of the unemployment in Thailand showed an unemployment rate of only 1% in March 2020. Obviously something wrong somewhere!

I was thinking exactly the same. From literally no unemployment to 10 percent is a big jump for two months time.

[tonray]

In other news, the baht continues to climb against the dollar.. Sigh

[Brunolem]

3 minutes ago, tonray said:

In other news, the baht continues to climb against the dollar.. Sigh

Or maybe it is the other way round...the baht is not doing so well against the euro...

[spidermike007]

Likely this is fake news. The reality is, it is closer to 20% of the total economy, when you take into account all of the ancillary trade benefited by tourism, or about 3.2 trillion ($110 billion) baht a year. That is huge. It likely represents between 5 and 8 million jobs. Thailand welcomed 39.8 million foreign tourists last year but projects as few as 14 million for 2020. It is likely we not see more than 1-2 million more international tourists arriving for the balance of the year. Thailand is claiming 3.8 million arrivals in January, but I believe that number to be highly suspect  (as the nation was already way, way off their normal totals for peak season, and occupancy was at an all time low) and another 3 million or so in February, and barely any tourist arrivals in March, the real numbers to date this year may be closer to 6 million arrivals. If only another 1-2 million arrive, as I predict, that is only 8 million or so, as a total for 2020.

 

That means a staggeringly high unemployment rate for a long time to come. It officially sits at 10%, but it is likely double and if you look at the numbers below, possibly triple that, as this insincere administration is not likely reporting the underground (informal) economy, which we all know is massive here. Thailand was already reeling from a massive decline in the quality of tourism, and poverty rates are climbing under this tremendously untalented administration, which totally lacks concern for the masses. 

 

Between 2015 and 2018, the poverty rate in Thailand increased from 7.2 percent to 9.8 percent, and the absolute number of people living in poverty rose from 4.85 million to more than 6.7 million. The increase in poverty in 2018 was widespread - occurring in all regions and in 61 out of 77 provinces. In the Central and Northeast, the number of poor increased by over half a million in each region during the same period. The conflict-affected South became the region with the highest poverty rate for the first time in 2017.

 

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/03/03/thailands-poverty-on-the-rise-amid-slowing-economic-growth

 

More than half of workers in Thailand are informal, meaning they are not covered by a social security scheme and are particularly vulnerable.  In 2018, there were an estimated 21.2 million informal and 17.1 million formal workers. Besides agriculture, with a 92% informality rate, jobs in commerce have the second highest rate of informality at 60%.

 

https://blogs.worldbank.org/eastasiapacific/thai-economy-covid-19-poverty-and-social-protection

[Genmai]

Well if that's true it certainly hasn't affected anyone's mentality up here in CM. Been trying to find a staff for our shop for over a month now. 2 out of 3 times the person never shows up. Sends in their papers, have a chat on the phone, make an interview appointment, then on the day - no show. Don't pick up phone. The few who do show up never even read the listing - no English, no necessary qualifications, didn't even look at the company website. Waste of time.

But if you talk to people - "Oh times are so rough! This government is sooo baaad!". Yeah yeah. Looking online rents are still as high as they were before. Adaptation ability or willingness to change = 0.