Bangkok – Representatives from eight Member States of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will gather in Bangkok next week (4-5 June) to discuss the use of labour market information in the context of migration policy, as a means to enhance skilled labour mobility in the region.
 
The event is the first of three planned capacity-building workshops on this topic facilitated by IOM, the UN Migration Agency, to support policymakers and technical-level officials in collecting and managing labour market and migration information.

The workshops will subsequently contribute towards the development of a pilot regional information sharing platform which will contain information about labour market conditions, policies and frameworks across ASEAN Member States.

The intra-regional movement of skilled labour is recognized as one of several pathways towards higher productivity and increased regional competitiveness. But while provisions for human capital development are in place, their realization has been hampered by the lack of regular and systematic assessments of labour market imbalances, including comprehensive information on occupational shortages and surpluses. Significant variations in the quality and quantity of available labour market data also currently exist between countries.

The workshops will enable policymakers to improve coordination on data collection and exchange labour market information. It is hoped that this will in turn facilitate the design of more effective and cohesive migration policies with ASEAN, and consequently increase the flow of skilled labour in the region.

“For the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) to achieve its goal of a people-oriented and people-centred community, policy harmonization among ASEAN Member States on mutual skills recognition and mismatch reduction will be crucial to maximize the economic and social benefits of labour mobility,” said IOM Thailand Chief of Mission Dana Graber Ladek. 

The workshops are part of an IOM Development Fund-supported project: Strengthening Capacity on Skills Recognition, Recruitment and Labour Migration Information in Support of ASEAN Integration. The project is designed to support the ASEAN Community Vision 2025 in the realization of a politically cohesive, economically integrated and socially responsible single market.

For further information please contact please contact IOM Thailand: Petra Neumann, Email: pneumann@iom.int, Tel: +66 2 343 9333 or Reuben Lim, Email: rlim@iom.int, Tel: +66 2 343 9370.