PUBLICATIONS & REPORTS

Contents Introduction

For most Thais the most important manifestations of the financial crisis are through the labor market, the subject of this paper. Results include: (1) aggregate labor market impacts were fairly small; (2) some effects occurred only with lags of a year or more so that analysis focused only on the year subsequent to July 1997 misses some important aspects; (3) some recorded effects appear puzzling (e.g., growth rates in real wages in the year prior to the 1998 Labor Force Survey); and (4) those affected most negatively include young adults and migrants. But, in contrast to previous claims, older adults, those residing outside of the Bangkok metropolitan area, females and perhaps those with low schooling, tended to fare as well or better than others. These findings raise some important questions about the extent to which some of these groups were particularly vulnerable to the crisis and, thus, what might be desired policy responses.