Skilled Labor Mobility in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC): Experience from Thailand Labor Market

Skilled labor mobility in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) plays an important issue in labor market due to the impact of globalization, especially increasing demand for high technology and integration among region. This impact leads free movement of workers among employer in service sectors, foreign investment and need more demand for skilled labor. Moreover, AEC blueprint in 2015 outlined to moves forward to free flow of skilled labor achieve strategic goal of single market and production base. These included facilitate the issuance of visas and employment passes; mutual recognition arrangements (MRAs) for major professional service; core concordance of service skills and qualifications; and enhance cooperation among ASEAN universities to increase region mobility for student and staff. To achieve the free flow of skilled labor in AEC member countries many issue have been discussed such as the mutual recognition arrangement (MRAs) for major professional services and core competencies for job skills required in the priority integration services (PIS) sectors (ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint: 2012). The objective of the study is to determine the impact of AEC on Thai labor market by using the comparison of labor immigration in AEC member countries. The paper provides a description of (a) currently govern the cross-country labor movement within ASEAN for skilled workers: and b) the analytical framework that support the discussion in deriving the recommendations that there are already experiences on these types of worker movements. The finding of Thai labor market has found in two characteristics: shortage of professionals and technicians and unskilled and semi-skilled labor.