Future of Decent Work in Asia

Every year, millions of young people enter the labour markets in Asia. Creating sufficient jobs to meet this demand is a huge challenge. What solutions work best needs to be determined in the local context. What this essay aims to do is look into the global opportunity structures for development, and reflect on what changing conditions could mean for the ability to create employment in Asia’s emerging economies.

What will be the implications of these trends for the future of work in Asia? Most of Asia’s emerging economies have followed the export- and manufacturing-led development model. Taking advantage of its abundance of cheap labour, East Asia’s flying geese have moved from agriculture to light manufacturing to full industrialisation. What worked so spectacularly well in East Asia over the last decades, however, may no longer work under rapidly changing global conditions.

The global window of opportunity for export-led growth seems to be closing. Given the dark political clouds on the horizon, it can no longer be taken for granted that OECD markets will stay open for Asian exports. Donald Trump has called the Trans-Pacific Partnership "a potential disaster for our country" and vowed to kill the deal on his very first day in office. More so, the United States and the United Kingdom seem determined to re-negotiate existing trade agreements. Other countries may also go down this road. Prudently, Asian population giants like China and India have already begun to reorient their development models towards their domestic markets. Smaller countries like Malaysia or South Korea are looking to their bigger neighbours. For geopolitical reasons, China may indeed be willing to found a regional trade regime around its Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. However, given the need to absorb its own excess capacities, it is unclear if China would be willing to replace the United States as the “buyer of last resort.” Asia’s emerging economies would, therefore, be wise to rethink their export orientation.

In the digital economy, humans are needed to cater to the hopes and needs of humans. The human economy, from tourism to fashion, from health services to elderly care, from food to arts and crafts, has enormous growth potential all over Asia. The human economy offers plenty of opportunities for employment generation. Until now, care work has largely been provided by family and neighbours, and remains largely without remuneration. Creating income from care work is especially attractive for women. Equally, the enormous potential of the tourism industry to create employment, directly and indirectly, has not yet been fully exploited.

Finally, the human economy offers a new perspective for employment in the chronically unproductive agricultural sector. Organic farming, local products, and even urban farming cater to the ethics and health conscious young urban middle class consumers. Producing high quality agricultural products for this niche market can be a source of decent jobs for agricultural workers. While human economies have created millions of jobs in Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore, South Asian countries have not even begun to explore these opportunities in full.

Source:

http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/indien/13226.pdf