BANGKOK (AlertNet) - Sompit Phromrith used to have a stable income. As a 12-year veteran at a textile company, her meagre 6,000 THB (around $177) monthly salary was enough to feed her family of four despite her husband not working. She could even send money to her mother in another province.

It all changed a couple of months ago. With export-driven industries early casualties of the economic crisis, the factory's orders plunged and she became another statistics in the ongoing saga of rising unemployment.

She's bounced back quickly, setting up a small coffee stall with her husband in front of her old factory. Yet even with both hands on deck, their current income is far lower than before.

"My first daughter is going to university this year and it will cost a lot of money," Phromrith said. "And the government's social security I currently get only covers eight months after retrenchment." At 46, she is deemed too old for most jobs she has applied so far.

Economists say Phromrith is not alone.

"The crisis is affecting the urban labour force and women, that part of the labour force that just escaped poverty in the last few years," Gyorgy Sziraczki, a senior economist at International Labour Organisation (ILO) Asia Pacific told AlertNet. "There's a danger that these families will find themselves below the poverty line again."

Indeed, figures show the number of absolute poor - those surviving on less than $1.25 a day - is expected to increase at a higher rate than the unemployed.

The Asian Development Bank said this number could rise by 62.3 million in Asia, compared to the 20 million or so projected rise in unemployed workers. Almost two-thirds of the world's absolute poor live in Asia.

EXTREME POVERTY

Already, over 52 million workers in Asia are living just 10 percent above the poverty line, according to ILO, who also said in 2007, there were 420 million extreme working poor - people who do not earn enough to look after themselves and families.

In its regional update released in April, the World Bank singled out Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand as countries projected to experience absolute increases in poverty with Cambodia expected to suffer the worst.

For Sziraczki, job losses are just the tip of the iceberg when looking at poverty levels.

"In Philippines we see that employers put employees on short-term work or even unpaid leave," he said. "So you do not show up in unemployment statistics or job loss statistics because you haven't lost your job. You just don't get anything. And it has a big impact on livelihood."

Lucia Victor Jayaseelan of Committee for Asian Women, a Bangkok-based network of over 40 women's groups in 14 Asian countries, agrees.

"In Thailand, I can see that the number of people hawking the streets is higher, and what are the countries doing?" she asked. "They have just looked at the fiscal stimulus to financial institutions and banks. What is trickling down to the workers and the poorer communities? Nothing."

The poor, with low skills, few assets and fewer buffers usually fares badly in times of crisis. World Bank figures show 19 million Indonesians and 1.1 million Thais fell below the poverty line during the Asian crisis more than a decade ago.

In addition, longer term impacts on health, education and livelihoods will make it even more difficult for them to escape the vicious cycle, economists said. This is made worse by the fact that Asia spends so little - 2.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product, even lower than Africa's 2.8 percent - on social protection measures, according to ILO.

Most countries in the Asia-Pacific region lack a European-style social safety net, according to a United Nation's paper released in March. More than two thirds of the region's elderly do not receive pensions and only one in five people get some form of health care.

Andy Mason, World Bank's lead economist for poverty reduction for East Asia and Pacific said, "In most of the countries where there is still going to be positive growth but lower, fewer people will escape poverty. But in some countries where growth becomes negative, there'll be absolute increase in the number of poor people - the new poor."

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