Main Article Content
Abstract
The study examines the determinants of unemployment in the ten ASEAN member countries during 2014–2023, focusing on economic performance and labour market inclusiveness. Four explanatory variables are considered: output per worker growth, working poverty, youth not in employment, education or training (NEET), and female vulnerable employment. Given the limitations of conventional mean-based estimation, panel quantile regression (PQR) is employed to examine how these factors influence unemployment across different points of its distribution, accounting for cross-country heterogeneity. The findings indicate that output per worker growth is negatively and statistically significantly associated with changes in unemployment at the 60th and 70th quantiles, while the estimates at the 80th and 90th quantiles are not statistically significant. The results therefore suggest that the productivity–unemployment relationship varies across the conditional distribution of changes in unemployment. Working poverty and female vulnerable employment exhibit heterogeneous effects across quantiles, reflecting differences in labour market structures and informality. The effect of NEET is generally weak and inconsistent. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of enhancing productivity, reducing labour market vulnerability, and promoting inclusive employment opportunities for sustainable labour market outcomes in ASEAN.
