Meanwhile, a white-collar middle class has developed, largely to service the multinational-dominated modern economy. Its numbers are rather modest, but their incomes have been boosted close to first-world levels. The combination of low numbers and high privilege makes for insecurity
It is instructive to compare this pattern to that of Japan back in 1970. Then, 34 per cent of Japanese worked in industry, four times the Thai proportion today; only 17 per cent in agriculture, less than half the Thai figure; many more in the white-collar working class, and almost none in the informal sector.