Mr. Suchart confirms success of the Job Expo. After three months, over 400,000 positions have been filled from a target of 1,000,000 vacancies. He reported that the number of new graduates hiring is only a fraction of the entire system hiring, after core businesses began to recover. He emphasized that there is a budget for hiring new graduates to accommodate April 2021.
On December 18, at the Government Houses, Labour Minister Mr. Suchart Chomklin spoke about progress in employment after the Job Expo. He said that the event had over 1 million positions, which was an important government policy. To date, 399,072 positions have been filled, or around 40 percent of the target. The public sector has hired around 200,000 positions and the private sector around 100,000 vacancies. In addition, 30,000 workers have been deployed overseas. This has taken 2-3 months after the Job Expo in late September. The event is considered a success, but according to some media analysis, the focus may be on new graduates which was a fraction of the event which aimed at four groups of workers; new graduates were only one group.
“Although we aim to hire 260,000 new graduates, the hiring of new graduates from April to October was 182,000. After the Job Expo which was held in late September, hiring of workers aged 25 and below was 25,000. Hiring through the Co-payment system has been mentioned by some media, which stated that hiring was 2,000 positions. I have investigated the companies that did not participate in the graduate hiring program because they are in the business that is still strong and seeks to create stability in life for employees such as automotive and textile industries, which are now recovering. Therefore, hiring new graduates from this project may not provide security in life because it is a one-year employment program. The companies have strong performance and are therefore able to hire regular workers. However, the government still has a budget for accepting new graduates in April 2021.”
Mr. Suchart said that the Co-payment project was launched by the government from concerns of startup and SME companies with less capital, and accounts for only a quarter of the Job Expo.
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Division of Public Relations
19 December 2020
