Skills training needed to meet targeted labour demand in Thailand

To help displaced workers in Thailand into new jobs to facilitate recovery from the impact of COVID-19, the World Bank has urged for skills training programmes that can help plug the gap in labour demand for sectors that are recovering more quickly.

“Given the weakness in labour demand, however, these training programmes may also need to focus on promoting livelihoods and self-employment skills, particularly in rural areas,” it highlighted in a recent report. 

The training can be focused on building digital, socioemotional, and advanced technical skills reflecting evolving needs in the labour market, it added. 

Acknowledging the ongoing impacts of the pandemic on jobs, the report also highlights a “renewed focus on policies designed to preserve and even create jobs in the short term”.

This could include employment retention policies like wage subsidies that seek to keep workers in their jobs and job creation policies like public works that could make up for workers’ reduced working hours. 

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It also called on for additional support for informal workers, who make up about half of the workforce and are likely not to be covered by job retention policies. For this group of workers, training subsidies, potentially linked to job search support or self-employment assistance, could be helpful, it said.