(อ่านบทความภาษาไทย)
In October 2023, Adecco Thailand conducted a survey to explore the opinions of workers in Thailand under the topics of salary, job satisfaction, and work trends. The purpose of this survey is to provide the overall picture of Thailand’s labor market at present through the eyes of workers so that both enterprises and job applicants can utilize these insights to adjust their employment schemes and job application strategies appropriately.
This data is a sum of opinions of 2,456 survey respondents who were workers living in Thailand with the following additional details: 
Overall Picture of Labor Market Situations – Perspective on the Economy
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The growth of businesses
Compared to the previous year (2022), we witnessed fewer layoffs of big companies’ employees in 2023. This perception was one of the factors which made most workers in Thailand (67%) feel more secure in their career and optimistic about the business of their company. They believed that their organization would grow modestly to strongly next year, especially workers in big companies with more than 2,500 employees, of which over 80% considered that their company would definitely grow in the following year. Nevertheless, while the majority of workers thought that their firm was growing moderately, the opinions from executive leaders went into two different directions, i.e., approximately one third of them reckoned that their company would enjoy a strong growth, whereas the other one third speculated that their business would have a limited growth or would be downsized.
Additionally, when comparing the opinions of workers in each industry, it was discovered that the workers in two industries, industrial/ manufacturing and public relations/ media, felt significantly less secure than other groups. Almost half (42-43%) of the workers in these two industries thought that their company was having a limited growth or being downsized. On the contrary, information/ digital technology, property/ real estate, and professional services/ consulting were the three industries which were most confident in their company’s growth. 
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Organizational culture
A positive trend was spotted in the previous year as two third of the workers felt satisfied with their organizational culture. 51% of them chose the “good” option on the rating scale or considered their company a desirable workplace, and another 15% selected the “excellent” option or regarded theirs as a dream company to work for.
" In 2023-2024, most Thais look at their company in an optimistic way "
Salary and Benefits
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Expected salary increase when changing jobs
When changing jobs, almost 60% of the workers wanted a salary increase of no less than 20%. It was also found out that the workers who tended to change jobs frequently were those who stayed in the same position for no more than 2 years. 30% of people in this group expected a salary increase of 30% when getting a new job, which was higher than other groups. The survey results also indicated that the desire for salary raise when changing jobs was similar between new graduates and executives despite their different base salaries. 
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Expected salary increase from the current workplace
When asked about the salary raise from their employer during the past year, it was discovered that most people got their salary increased by 2-5%, followed by 5-10%. On the other hand, only 6% of the workers got a salary raise of more than 20%.
Besides that, when asked about the expected salary increase in the coming year, almost 40% of the workers expected to get a raise of 5-10% or higher than what they had received in the previous year, which was in line with their feeling that their company was growing. 
" Workers expect to get an exponential salary increase more from changing jobs (20-30%)
than from the salary raise from their current company (2-10%) "
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Frequency of salary raise
The survey results showed that about 75% of companies in Thailand considered increasing their employees’ salary once a year. Interestingly, medium-sized companies with 50-500 staff tended to consider raising employees’ salary more than once a year. This might be due to their ability to adjust strategies easily, which is one of the advantages of medium-sized businesses.
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Benefits for workers
Based on the statistics, it could be said that a health insurance was the most basic benefit that companies in Thailand offered to their employees since 84% of workers got a health insurance from their workplace, followed by flexible work options (53%), commuting allowance (43%), and trainings & skill development (41%) respectively.
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Satisfaction toward salary and benefits
It is good news that three fourth of the workers felt that their salary and benefits were up to the standard or above the standard compared to those of others in similar positions in the same industry. However, there were three industries which had the higher proportion of workers who felt significantly dissatisfied with their salary and benefits compared to the average, i.e., public relations/ media, IT, and government. This feeling might result in a higher rate of resignation in such industries in the coming year, and there is a chance that those workers may choose to switch to work in other industries instead. 
Resignation
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Proportion of workers looking for a new job
90% of the survey respondents stated that they were open to new opportunities in the next 12 months. 54% of them were ready for new chances but were not actively looking for a new job, while the other 36% were intensely looking for a new career. The survey results also revealed that people who were actively looking for a new job were spreading in all levels of positions, from new graduates to executives in similar proportions. But when examining each industry, it could be seen that some industries had a higher proportion of new job seekers than the average (36%), i.e., manufacturing (41%), IT (39%), and public relations/ media (38%). This could be caused by several reasons such as their dissatisfaction of salary and benefits offered or the feeling of insecurity in their career as mentioned earlier.
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Job search channels
Online job boards were the most popular channel that job applicants in Thailand used for their job search, followed by recruitment agencies and LinkedIn. 
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Factors that applicants consider when choosing a new company for a new job
The number one factor that job applicants considered when choosing a new company to work with was, unsurprisingly, compensation and benefits. As many as 94% of the applicants paid attention to this factor, followed by work-life balance, professional development, and management culture. 
" While offering a higher salary than the market average is an easy way to attract talents,
it may not always be the best way
since there are still as many as 34% of applicants who do not consider money the number 1 factor "
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Strategies to retain staff
On the enterprise side, the top strategies that they often used to retain their employees were the clear opportunities and career path, flexible work options, and skill development for the staff respectively. 
" Companies that pay attention to ESG (Environmental, social, and corporate governance)
and CSR (Corporate social responsibility) may have an advantage in attracting and retaining employees
since as many as 91% of workers consider these important things that companies should care about "
Skills and Advancement
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Satisfaction toward the L&D system
According to the survey results, the satisfaction levels of workers toward their company’s skill development policy were split into halves: half of the workers rated the L&D system of their company as good-excellent while the other half chose the average-poor score options. Besides, workers in large organizations (500 employees and above) rated their company’s L&D system as good-excellent in a larger proportion than those who worked in medium-sized or small companies. Still, for companies of any size, the satisfaction scores of their employees from different levels were quite similar. This is a positive trend which indicates that companies in Thailand do not neglect the skill development of their operational-level employees.
When looking at the results by industry, we found that there were two industries which might need to pay more attention to the L&D system quickly, i.e., public relations/ media and manufacturing since more than half of their employees rated them as average-poor in this aspect. 
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Skills that employees would like to develop
In this day and age when digital knowledge has become a vital skill for the creation of innovations, digital-savvy workers are highly demanded in the labor market. For this reason, digital & technology skills were the top skill set that workers would like to develop in order to increase their opportunities to advance in their career, followed closely by people management & leadership skills that 60% of the workers were eager to develop. 
What Companies Look for in Applicants
When asking employers, HR officers, and hiring managers about the qualities that they were looking for in their applicants, it was discovered that the top five attributes that they paid special attention to were the skills and expertise related to the position, relevant work experience, problem-solving abilities, cultural fit with the company, and communication skills. Based on the results, we could clearly see that educational background was not one of the most important factors for the selection of job candidates.
The survey results also revealed that professional attitude is the main attribute that applicants lacked the most, followed by soft skills, experience and expertise in the industry, hard skills, and similar work experience respectively. 
The Role of AI in Workplaces
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Overall picture of GenAI usage in Thailand
AI has become one of the major work trends in the past couple of years, especially Generative AI (GenAI) such as ChatGPT which has been broadly used worldwide. In Thailand, approximately half of the workers used GenAI (45%) and most of them (74%) viewed AI positively, which means that only a small portion of workers (24%) was concerned that AI would steal their job.
When examining the details of 55% of workers who used GenAI to help them work, it was discovered that they mostly used GenAI to translate texts (47%), search for new ideas (43%), create contents (42%), do research (32%), and help analyze data (30%).
Meanwhile, the reasons why the other 45% never used GenAI were because there was no need to use it (66%), noncompliance with the company’s policy (25%), not sure how to use it (20%), worries about security (19%), and other reasons (5%).
Moreover, when comparing the proportion of usage in each industry, the data showed that the government (62%), IT (59%), and logistics & supply chains (52%) were the top three industries that utilized GenAI.
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Concerns about employment
As we look deeper into the details of 24% of the workers who worried that AI might steal their job in the next 5 years, we found that the groups with the biggest concern were part-time staff, unemployed people, and executives.
It is surprising how executives were more concerned about AI than normal employees. Based on our speculation, the main cause for concern among executives might be because they worried that AI’s outstanding abilities to analyze, forecast, and plan the business would reduce the role of executives. Also, they could be afraid that if they did not know how to use AI or could not catch up with it, they might be replaced by other executives with better knowledge and understanding of AI usage. Besides, when analyzing the survey results by industry, we could see that the concerns of workers in each industry were not much different. Only workers from the government sector and real estate industry felt much less worried about AI. 
" Between workers in the industries that are familiar with the use of GenAI and those who hardly utilize it,
their concern of losing jobs to AI is not much different "
View the data and graphs displaying full survey results in the Adecco Thailand Salary Guide 2024
