Skills or jobs: Which should Cambodia focus on?

[Kung-fu Hillbilly]

Sheith Khidhir
27 November 2019

Cambodia boasts one of the lowest unemployment rates in Southeast Asia. According to research platform for investors, Macrotrends, this number stood at 1.05 percent in 2018, putting its unemployment rate only higher than Thailand’s (0.67 percent) and Lao PDR’s (0.61 percent) when compared to other ASEAN countries.

The idea that Cambodia has such a low unemployment rate may seem like good news for Cambodians at first glance. However, some experts say the low unemployment rate in Cambodia fails to reflect the real situation on the ground.

According to the ILO report, Cambodia’s unemployment rate is below the 3.4 percent for Southeast Asia as a whole. However, 51 percent of jobs in Cambodia are “vulnerable” jobs, which is slightly higher than the Southeast Asian average of 46 percent.

The idea of underemployment is that people work in jobs unworthy of their skills. If this is the case in Cambodia, then it is noteworthy.

The ASEAN Post recently published an article which stated that leading institutions in Singapore will be helping Cambodia to get itself ready to fully embrace the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

There is little doubt that Cambodia will have a lot to learn from Singapore in terms of skills; and upgrading skills continues to be something Cambodia needs to work on. Nevertheless, the question that remains unanswered is this: what then happens to these high-skilled Cambodians? If underemployment is a problem that Cambodia is facing, then upgrading skills does not solve this problem. Instead, Cambodia must focus on creating job opportunities that will allow these future high-skilled workers to work within their borders.

https://theaseanpost.com/article/skills ... odia-focus

[SternAAlbifrons]

Skills or Jobs?
You forgot the other option - Cards

[Felgerkarb]

A motodop sleeping all day on his moto is not employed, sorry. That unemployment rate is a joke.

[explorer]

That unemployment rate is a joke.

Agreed

Go to any village any day and count the number of men doing nothing, or drinking beer. It seems if other family members work and send them money, they are not included in unemployment statistics.

[jovial fucher]

This country imports so much food that if someone were to learn to, say, farm pigs, it would give them a job and keep the money from going elsewhere.

The low-level skills should be developed more, to provide what is needed, and higher-value, service-related skills should be sought after at the same time.

[John Bingham]

This country imports so much food that if someone were to learn to, say, farm pigs, it would give them a job and keep the money from going elsewhere.

The low-level skills should be developed more, to provide what is needed, and higher-value, service-related skills should be sought after at the same time.

There are a whole lot of pigs farmed here. The problem is that neighboring countries can do it more efficiently with lower costs so imports are cheaper than local product.

[Bitte_Kein_Lexus]

A lot of the stats in these foreign-made reports are completely useless. Two days ago there was a report in The Post penned by three so-called experts (including a UN guy) on deforestation in Cambodia amd how Cambodia was "uniquely positioned" to develop ecotourism or something like that. It stated that Cambodia currently has 47% forest cover, down from 57% ten years ago, which is complete bullshit. Not sure who gets to these numbers or how, but they're quite misleading.