Measuring skills in Myanmar’s garment sector

Policy brief 31 Mar 2021 Firms

Authors

Since skills can be upgraded by training, learning about the relationship between skills and economic outcomes can have direct implications for policymaking.
The authors developed a method to measure sewing skills of garment sector workers and collected this data by conducting a large-scale survey in Myanmar.
The study finds that occupational skill is an important determinant of workers’ earning. This is true even after taking into account factors such as human capital, experience in the sector, job tenure, age, education, and skill grades given by the factory.
In particular, the notion of multi-tasking operations as a skill measure robustly explains earning the most.
These findings raise a key policy implication to support the importance of providing job training opportunities.