Publication Code: A76
In the past decade, the industry sector of Thailand has developed from unskilled labour oriented to skilled labour and technological intensive industries. One important question, arising from this evolution, is how the Thai educational system responds to the employment demand in those industries and how those industries adjust to the labour shortage problem.
The 1997 economic and financial crisis has sparked an unprecedented critical unemployment problem. Within the next 5 to 10 years, the key questions are, therefore, what will be the employment situation and which fields of studies for graduates will face an unemployment problem.
The main objective of this study is to answer the
preceding questions by forecasting the demand and supply of manpower in the industrial
sector as well as analyzing the imbalance of demand and supply for labour force. However,
given the limitation on the data, the forecast will be made only at the macro level. The
second objective is to study the problem of employment and manpower database and to
recommend efficient management for manpower data in the industrial sector. The third
objective is to assess manpower need and changes in skill composition of six main
industries, i.e. textile and garments, food processing, electronics, petrochemical
products, plastics, automotive and auto-parts as well as to provide direction for future
policies on the manpower development in the industrial sector.
December 1998