Topic: Does inflation exist in Thailand? Static Starting Pay

[Freddy Farang]

I have been teaching for over 3 years in Thailand and I cannot remember starting pay rates ever going up in that time for instance Chula's Language School has been offering 700 baht per lesson for the last three years at least and longer than that I suspect. Maybe it's just me what do you think?

[admin]

This is an awesome post, but I am moving this over to the Teaching issues forum. I personally saw wages go up from 2001 until 2004. But now is 2006, the wages look pretty stagnant. Either we are getting an over supply of teachers or Thai people just don't want to pay any more money.

[Rick_BKK]

I think you are absolutely correct Freddy, pay rates appear to have been stuck for a number of years. When I first came to Thailand around five years ago, the school I worked at paid 30,000 Baht a month. I was told by other teachers that the pay rate had been the same for a number of years. Last time I saw the school advertise on ajarn, which was some time last year, they were still paying 30,000 Baht. So I guess they have been paying the same for about 8 or 9 years.

I think ultimately that schools will only put up pay rate if they cannot get a teacher, and even then only reluctantly. Unfortunately many schools would much rather lower the standard and quality of the teachers they employ than increase the pay rate.

[MrTam-di-dai-di]

Good thread.

We have had some luck in getting the board of our school to do an inflation adjustment, which is on the verge of approval (fingers crossed).

This is something that has concerned me for years, leading to the erosion of teacher's real salary. Really it should be covered by Thai labor law, but I'm not sure (anyone got some answers??).

How on Earth do Thais cope with this?? If my sums are right we've just seen off a year of record inflation at 6% p.a. That means a 3 000 baht increase of ytou are on 50 000 just to stay afloat.

Anyone else suggested this at their school? How did it go?

[durian]

Does anyone have a reference for the current inflation rate in Thailand? Thanks.

[Duckbill]

I couldn't find any year on year figures, but inflation year on year was up above 4.5% last year, can't find anything firm on the stats and the Bank of Thailand is predicting inflation rate of 4.3% for 2006. I highly doubt most of us teachers will see a 4.3% wage hike on new and existing contracts. Just won't happen.

I love it when economists like to talk about the core rate of inflation vs consumer price hikes. Go ahead and exclude food prices and energy prices, a huge hunk out of people's pocketbooks. They may be volatile prices but in the last 2 years they have gone nowhere but up!

[MrTam-di-dai-di]

 ^^^^Most CPI's don't include house/condo prices or at best have a small floating rents sample included, leaving out a major inflatioary pressure.

[NukeThemSlowly]

Seems to me that Thai management is reactive- no planning, no prediction.  So they won't raise salaries until it becomes painfully obvious (and that pain is usually a financial one) that they won't get enough or good enough teachers at present salary levels- this usually takes a few years.