Fewer births and labour shortages worry experts

Thailand fears that worker recruitment will be difficult in the post-pandemic economic recovery. By 2040 the ratio of the population of working age to seniors is expected to drop by half. In 2021 only 400,000 children were born. Foreign workers are also absent, held up by the health crisis.

Bangkok (AsiaNews) - As Thailand gets ready for the fifth wave of the pandemic, government authorities and specialists are looking at the demographic and employment trends that have emerged in the past two years.

Two stand out, namely a decline in the number of births (with consequent aging of the population) and a shrinking workforce (plus growing job insecurity).

Many companies expect recruitment to be an uphill battle even when the economy gains momentum, this despite the millions of unemployed and people without a steady income, in various sectors such as technology, garment, foodservice, entertainment and tourism, as people have been forced to accept casual work or self-employment at the margins of the economy.

At least half of the people employed in tourism before the outbreak of COVID-19 will not return to their old jobs, due to the decline of the sector (which started before the pandemic) and workers finding alternative jobs in other sectors.

For the National Economic and Social Development Council, the active population in the nation of 70 million will continue its decline, from 43.2 million in 2020 to 36.5 million in 2040. The main cause is fewer births, from 1.2 million per year in 1970 to 400,000 in 2021.

This will cut by half the ratio between the active and senior population, from 3.6 to 1.8 in 2040.

For the Employers' Confederation of Thai Trade and Industry, unemployment now stands at 4.6 per cent of the workforce, the highest in a decade, plus 1.8 per cent of underemployment.

Both categories are growing rapidly, but are also likely underestimated given the size of the informal sector in the country.

If manufacturers today complain about the lack of 300,000 workers, the shortage in the sectors that usually employ foreign labour is 500,000.

Many of the three million foreign migrants present in the country were excluded from productive activities, as many went home (above all to Myanmar but also Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, the Philippines) and cannot easily come back to Thailand because of lockdowns and inactivity, starting with the construction industry.

• thailand
• demographics
• covid-19
• pandemic
• birthrate
• casual labour
• self-employment
• job insecurity