Sujittra Rodsomboon¹, Jidapa Meepien²

(1. Sripatum University, Thailand; 2. Kenan Institute of Asia, Thailand)

 

 

Abstract: This paper is a comprehensive study on the situation of youth employment in rural areas of Thailand. It mainly focuses on how the stakeholders can help improving the decent work as well as improving employability for young people living in rural areas. This paper firstly provides the methodological approaches in understanding the theoretical framework of decent work and the core concepts and components of the employability. For the decent work, it is based on social security. For the components of employability, it focuses on the skills that are needed by labor market. This paper applied a qualitative research, which is including document researches and secondary data analysis. The secondary data are including; the Labor Force Survey (LFS) and the statistical data from the International Labour Organization, UNESCO and FAO. The study discloses that many of young people living in rural areas have less opportunity to access into the labor market, especially young people living in the northeastern part and the northern part of Thailand. In addition, the study also shows that many of them, in particular those, are working in labor intensive sectors are vulnerable to hazardous working condition. The study found that economic and social disadvantages of rural communities are the major factors. Even if the Royal Thai Government has been expanding rural development policies and programs, such as education for all, there are many of young people in rural areas those are unable to access to these programs. Consequently, they obstruct opportunity to improve their employability of young people in rural areas. To increase opportunities for rural youth employment needs the establishment of Programs including; skill trainings, income generating program and social protection program (e.g., health insurance, minimum wages), and livelihood’s programs in which reduce the poverty. In addition, the rural areas need learning centers that help providing education for young people.

 

 

Key words: youth employment; education for all policies

 

JEL code: J