As technology continues playing a more important role in the business sector, especially under the ambitious Thailand 4.0 policy, Thai labor market is naturally forced to adjust itself fast while laborers need to acquire more skills to cope with the ever-changing environment.
A survey by ManpowerGroup suggested that the labor demand in the sales and marketing field has been the highest in 2017, while other sectors that were in high demand of labor included accounting and finance, IT and engineering.
At the same time, laborers with sales and marketing background were noted as the group with the highest demand for employment, followed by those with engineering, administration and transport and logistics background.
While it seemed demand and supply have been matching, the unemployment rate in 2017 was still higher than in 2016 by 0.2%, largely due to the fact that the new generation of job seekers was more and more selective. Other contributing factors were the shortage of people with right knowledge, skills and experiences, as well as more complex requirements from employers.
Nevertheless, ManpowerGroup expects the situation to improve markedly in 2018 because of an expected rise in investment in such large projects as the high-speed rail projects and the Easter Economic Corridor project.
But there remain a major challenge for the labor market and it is the digital transformation, which means an urgent need for laborers to learn more skills to boost efficiency.