PM Prayuth’s “Return Happiness” song must be working wonders, because Thailand has been rated the “happiest economy” in the world after it came at the bottom of a “misery ranking” for global economies.
The Bloomberg Misery Index 2016 predicts that Thailand will retain its bottom place of the miserable economies this year because of continuing low unemployment and inflation.
The index was compiled by surveying economists and looking at economic data for inflation and unemployment.
Although Thailand is not a wealthy country, the index attributes Thailand’s low ranking to its unusually low unemployment rate and “unique structural issues that allow more people to count as employed.”
Its unemployment rate was just 0.9 percent last year, according to World Bank data.
Thailand beat out Singapore, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, China, Denmark, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom to be the least miserable economy in the world.
Meanwhile Venezuela topped the list as the most miserable economy for a second year, due to a staggering inflation at an annual average of 98.3 percent plus 6.8 percent unemployment, which Bloomberg predicts to soar to 7.7 percent this year.
Cool! Let’s celebrate with a verse of “Wun-tee-chaat-lae-ong-rah-chah“!
