THAILAND may lose up to 14.4 million jobs due to the Covid-19 pandemic and widespread drought.
The government's planning unit said this could happen in the second and third quarters of the year with the tourism sector expected to take the brunt of it.
The National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC) said 2.5 million workers in the tourism sector could lose their jobs, while 1.5 million in the industrial sector and 4.4 million in other parts of the service sector could suffer similar fates.
According to a report in the Bangkok Post, the tourism sector employs an estimated 3.9 million people, while the industrial sector hires about 5.9 million workers.
Workers in other parts of the service sector, such as schools or places with large groups of people such as fresh markets, sports stadiums or shopping malls, are estimated to number 10.3 million people.
NESDC's secretary general Thosaporn Sirisamphand said the drought crisis, which started in the middle of last year and continued into the first quarter of this year, has also resulted in a reduction of employment in the agricultural sector.
There were about 370,000 seasonally unemployed workers, the highest in seven years for the farm sector.
He said a total of six million farmers were affected by the drought.
In April, 26 provinces announced assistance for emergency disaster victims (drought).
There are about 3.9 million farmers facing drought and 2.1 million farmers with insufficient water, unable to engage in agricultural activities.
"The impact of the outbreak and the drought on unemployment will be apparent in the second quarter and more clearly in the second half of the year," he said.
Thosaporn said the government has announced a spate of relief measures to rehabilitate the domestic economy by focusing on creating employment in the local area and providing training programmes to improve workers' skills and aid measures to help new graduates.
He said the agency plans to ask for financial assistance from the government's 400 billion baht slated for economic and social rehabilitation to soften the economic blow from the deadly virus outbreak and to create 200,000 jobs for new graduates.
There will be about 520,000 new graduates between May and July.
The NESDC reported Thailand's unemployment rate was still relatively low in the first quarter at 1.03 per cent of the total workforce or 395,000 people, up from 0.92 per cent in the same quarter of last year or 351,000 people.
"In the first quarter, the pandemic had yet to affect employment much," Thosaporn said.