Skip to main content

Labor Mobility and Economic Integration

Below is a visualization of the migration patterns across the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN). [ASEAN is a grouping of 10 countries including Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam]. The objective of the investigation is to illustrate the extent to which economic integration could be challenging given the different economic weights of its members. ASEAN members range from the poorest Cambodia with current per capita GDP of $1,090 to wealthy Singapore at over $56,000 as of 2014. One of the core pillars of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), inked in KL in December 2015, is mobility of skilled labor across the region. The interactive figure below illustrates migration patterns as of 2013 (using data from the UN Population Division). The biggest sender countries, as of 2013 were Indonesia and Malaysia, which had over 1.4 million and over 800 thousand of its citizens living in other ASEAN countries, respectively. Upper middle income Malaysia and High income Singapore were the favored destinations, receiving 1.64 million and 940,000 ASEAN citizens, respectively. The skill level of these immigrants is hard to determine but local debate in countries like Malaysia suggests an overwhelming number of them are of low skills as evinced by their occupations (maids, plantation, and construction workers).

Migration Patterns: Ranked by Sender Country, 2013


Migration Patterns Ranked by Receiving Country, 2013

Source: United Nations Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Constructive feedback is always welcome. Thank you

Popular posts from this blog

Modeling Core PCE inflation: A dual approach

Today's release of the August 2025 Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation data drew widespread media attention, with coverage highlighting both the persistence of inflation and its implications for Federal Reserve policy. Across outlets, analysts pointed to resilient consumer spending and income growth as signs of underlying economic strength, even as inflation remains above the Fed's 2% target. The consensus among media reports is that while inflation is not worsening, its stubbornness continues to challenge policymakers navigating a softening labor market and evolving rate expectations. To provide deeper insights into inflation's trajectory, I've developed a forecasting framework that combines two econometric approaches — ARIMA time series modeling and Phillips Curve analysis—to predict Core PCE inflation. This analysis presents a unique opportunity to validate my forecasting methodology against eight months of 2025 data. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mapping the Blast Radius: What Happens When the "World's Factory" Stops?

In global trade, "efficiency" often masks "fragility." We know that China is central to the global electronics supply chain, but how central? And if that node were to go dark, who would feel the shockwaves first? To answer this, I moved beyond standard trade statistics and built a network simulation using the OECD Inter-Country Input-Output (ICIO) Tables (2023 Edition) . This dataset maps the DNA of the global economy, tracking every dollar of input across 66 countries and 45 industries. 1. The Blast Radius: Tracing the Contagion I treated the global economy as a directed graph and simulated a total supply shock to Chinese Electronics (CHN_C26) . By tracing the flow of inputs across three tiers of buyers, I visualized the "Blast Radius" of this disruption. Fig 1: The Supply Chain Cascade. The shock originates in China (Red) and immediately hits "Tier 1" assembly hubs (Dark Blue) before cascading to global consumers...
Post a Comment
Read more

Turkey's Informality Tax

A general-equilibrium model of Turkey's dual labour market says the cost of taxing formal work doesn't show up where we usually look for it. The bottomline: Making Turkey's transfer to the unemployed a third more generous raises unemployment from 8.6% to 9.2% . That is the honest cost, and it is not large. How you pay for it matters more than whether you pay for it. Funded by payroll taxes, the poor end up 0.6% worse off than before the transfer was raised — the policy defeats itself. Funded by VAT, they are 0.5% better off . The reason is not unemployment, which is nearly identical under both. It is informality . A higher payroll tax pushes formal jobs into the unregistered sector, where the wage is 43% lower and nothing is taxed. Turkey is not on the wrong side of the payroll-tax Laffer curve — revenue peaks around 53%, well above today's ~37.5% wedge. But the marginal cost...
Post a Comment
Read more