Vietnam maybe, but Thailand is a middle income country. India has an HDI of .63, Thailand is at .68 (China is at .76, the USA is at .92).
Labor costs are only one part that detract from your margin, you also have to consider productivity (what are you getting for your costs) and overhead (what taxes/bribes/rents do you need to pay). It is really easy to set up in a developing country and lose money rather than make it.
Right, and part of the "value" that Accenture brings is that it knows how to operate in these areas. It will send US-based managers to work with the foreign dev teams to, ahem, ensure productivity on projects where it matters (on many projects e.g. government contracts the output doesn't really matter), it knows the local bribes and customs companies need to follow to operate in the area.
Those Thailand numbers are way off. Thailand's HDI is 0.8 and expat salaries (at least at McK) in BKK were always Shanghai and Beijing adjacent (if not higher until the 2010s).
Heck, a lot of Vietnamese prefer studying and working abroad in Thailand because salaries and development is higher than in VN and only the elite can afford to send their kids to VinUni or RMIT Saigon.
Bangkok is an anomaly, these numbers are Thailand wide. I was surprised China passed Thailand in the last decade (given those numbers are country wide as well, Shanghai is going to be much higher than .76). Last time I looked 10 years ago, China was lower than Thailand, things change quickly.
The original premise that Thailand is cheaper than India is definitely wrong, we both can probably agree on that.
I think the issue was Google Search's summarization algorithm parsed the wrong sentence in a non-verified website (I did the same search you did and recreated your issue).
Also, the same thing holds for China as well. BKK =/= Thailand and Shanghai/Beijing/Tianjin =/= China as well. Not to mitigate the massive amount of development that China has seen the past 20 years, but Thailand's subregional development (measured via HDI) is very even - the poorest region (Isan) has a HDI of around 0.781 and the richest (BKK the prefecture, not the city) is around 0.839 in 2021. Compared to China outside of Tier 1 cities it's a significant difference (and on a separate note Ik Chinese policymakers have been looking into Thailand's anti-poverty policies to replicate them in Shaanxi)
Not sure why you included Tianjin there, it isn't as rich as Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen etc...
Thailand back slided during the last decade because of political instability. Having a military coup every couple of years isn't great for business. Although I agree that .68 is too low for Thailand from personal experience. It feels like Thailand should still be above China, but I'm not confident in making that call without seeing the numbers crunched (so I'm willing to accept your numbers more than the ones I found via a quick Google search).
I included Tianjin because it has significant autonomy and ability to gain funds thanks to being a Provincial Level city. Not having to deal with the overhead of provincial politics helps! Imo Guangzhou and Shenzhen are anomalies due to how closely integrated Guangdong has been to HK (and thus able to get much more FDI and build a stronger economy than Nanjing for example).
Generally speaking, the median Thai person does tend to have a better life than the median Chinese person, simply because poverty eradication has been a pretty significant plank of both the Junta and the elected politicans, plus the massive amount of FDI coming in from SK+Japan after the whole 2013-2017 trade war.
But then again, comparing a Billion+ country that gives significant administrative autonomy to provinces with a unitary country with a population comparable of Zhejiang might be unfair. At least on a developmental and economic level, Thailand would be comparable to Jiangsu or Zhejiang.
So does Chongqing but it wouldn’t be considered a rich city. Tianjin is the place I go to see derelict sky scrapers, they had one on my first visit in 1999, they have the tallest one now.
Labor costs are only one part that detract from your margin, you also have to consider productivity (what are you getting for your costs) and overhead (what taxes/bribes/rents do you need to pay). It is really easy to set up in a developing country and lose money rather than make it.