Cost Of Labor In Thailand Vs Philippines

[AD1985]

Hi,

I was looking into hiring support for my E-Commerce site from the Philippines. A good educated worker for my purposes (writing, link building, customer support) will cost me about $600-$700 a month.

I know the Philippines tends to have very cheap labor, but my goal has been to bounce back and forth (and eventually retire) to Thailand. So if hiring a worker there can offer other advantages then I may spend a little extra to do that.

Is there a significant differential in costs for Thai labor vs Philippine? What do you guys think I could hire a basic college graduate writer and english speaker for in Thailand?

[AD1985]

I'm sure someone else works online from Thailand

[CWMcMurray]

I think it would probably cost you about the same, but the English proficiency may be a bit better in the Phillipines.

That's not to say that there are not a fair number of Thais with good English abilities, but most of Thai with a high level of English will cost you a bit more and they have probably been to the best Univerities and may not stick around for long.

Most of them will probably be looking to get hired at large MNCs or will work with the family business.

If no English or very limited English is needed, then I would say its all about the same, so up to you...

[junkofdavid2]

What kind of "labor"?

By far when I was assigned there, philippine managers from the top schools (Ateneo, De La Salle) seemed a lot more qualified (and with the ability to "think", take charge, and be responsible) than so called "managers" in Thailand.

However, philippine labor (i.e. factory workers, etc.) are often notoriously militant and can give you a multitude of strikes/protests/headaches for the most minute issues despite being "qualified" (i.e. english speakers). And even if you fire them with just cause (i.e. even for stealing!), if they complain to their department of labor or national labor commission or something like that, the labor court always seems to side with them.

That brings a lot of additional hidden costs.

.

Edited May 26, 2009 by junkofdavid2

[TerryTibbs]

I was looking into hiring support for my E-Commerce site from the Philippines. A good educated worker for my purposes (writing, link building, customer support) will cost me about $600-$700 a month.

Link building is for artificially gaming a search engines organic results. It is an art that takes years to perfect without having to resort to blog, directory or reciprocal spam as that is all it is spam and doesn't say much about your online business to Google for example. Hiring a 'link monkey" on the cheap as that is what you are implying will do nothing for your online business's search results unless you continually monitor them which is defeating the whole object.

[bubba]

A bit late on this one, but just happened to see the post. We have operations in both Thailand and the Philippines and employ degreed engineers. Our base labour rate in the Philippines for such an employee is about 20% less than in Thailand. That is somewhat offset by the superior English skills of Filipinos; however, we find productivity and quality of education (at least in our field) better in Thailand. All that said, although salaries are lower in the Philippines, the basic living costs for these employees is higher in terms of their living expenses, unfortunately for them. This might explain why every time we advertise for positions in Thailand, we get loads of CVs from Filipinos who are living in the Philippines.

As an aside, I'd say US$600 - $700/month for the position you describe is very much on the high side, unless you are going through an agency. If you are talking about a fresh university graduate with writing skills, I'd say you should be looking at more like half that amount/month in basic salary expense.

Edited September 4, 2009 by bubba