{"id":224560,"date":"2025-10-19T12:37:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T12:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/224560\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T12:37:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T12:37:06","slug":"thais-trapped-in-chronic-debt-as-office-workers-on-30k-live-like-labourers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/224560\/","title":{"rendered":"Thais trapped in chronic debt as office workers on 30k live like labourers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the \u201cLife Fest 40+: Better to Know Early\u201d event held at CentralWorld in Bangkok, Surapol Opasatien, Chief Executive Officer of the National Credit Bureau, warned that Thailand\u2019s economy is entering a downturn, with household debt emerging as a critical risk factor.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Without immediate intervention, the economy could expand by less than 1% \u2014 or not at all \u2014 in the final quarter of 2025, despite the usual year-end spending boost.<\/p>\n<p>Surapol noted that government stimulus measures such as Khon La Khrueng (Let\u2019s Go Halves) remain crucial. The Bank of Thailand recently projected only 1.6% GDP growth for 2026, and if companies continue to grow by no more than 2%, questions may arise about potential layoffs.<\/p>\n<p>He added that Thailand\u2019s financial crisis began during the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused widespread income loss between 2020 and 2023 \u2014 especially among 10 million self-employed workers. According to central bank data, it could take up to four to five years for their earnings to recover to pre-pandemic levels.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, Thais are facing shrinking incomes, rising expenses, and escalating debt. Over the past three years, average income has grown by only 3%, while household spending \u2014 including debt repayment \u2014 has risen by 5%, creating a widening financial imbalance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the \u201cLife Fest 40+: Better to Know Early\u201d event held at CentralWorld in Bangkok, Surapol Opasatien, Chief&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,5427,23547,46,107508,107507,17429,107506],"class_list":["post-224560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-debt","tag-debt-crisis","tag-economy","tag-labourers","tag-office-workers","tag-quality-of-life","tag-thais"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}