BANGKOK – With household debt at 86.7% of GDP and a growing share of it spent on day-to-day living, millions of Thais are building a second income through online selling, delivery work, and live commerce. Government relief is easing the debt. The harder question is income.
Thai households owe more than they have in years. Household debt reached 16.44 trillion baht in the fourth quarter of 2025, or 86.7% of GDP, according to Bank of Thailand figures reported by The Nation. The headline number is not the worrying part. The shape of the borrowing is.
More of that debt is now going on daily survival than on anything that builds future income. Personal consumption debt rose to 12.72 trillion baht, the largest single share, while borrowing for occupational or income-generating purposes fell to around 2.9 trillion baht, The Nation reported. Borrowing through pawnshops climbed to 121.3 billion baht, a sign that more households are reaching for short-term cash when the month runs short.
What the State is Doing
The official response has focused on the debt rather than on incomes. The Bank of Thailand treats a debt-to-GDP ratio above its “watchful level” of 80% as a drag on long-term growth, and has issued responsible-lending rules built on resolving existing debt without pushing borrowers deeper, as set out on the Bank of Thailand website.
Its main relief scheme, “You Fight, We Help,” drew 940,000 registered borrowers covering 620 billion baht in debt before registration closed at the end of September 2025. By that point, lenders had restructured the debts of about 620,000 of them, and roughly 80% of the accounts in the programme had returned to normal repayment, the Bank of Thailand reported.
Relief of this kind eases the repayments. It does not add to what a household earns. That gap is what pushes more Thais toward a second income, and four channels now do most of the work.
Selling on the e-Commerce Platforms
One of the most common extra income streams is setting up a shop on Shopee or Lazada. e-Marketplaces are the single most-used sales channel for Thai online businesses, accounting for 24.58% of online sales, according to the Electronic Transactions Development Agency (ETDA). The barrier is low: no shopfront, no staff, just a phone to list goods.
The goods that move are mostly everyday items. Clothing is the most-purchased category online at 60.12%, ahead of electronics at 54.05%, and the average order is around 429 baht, the Office of National Digital Economy and Society Commission found, as reported by Amarin TV. For a seller, that means a market of small, frequent, low-value orders, which suits someone running a shop in the evenings around another job.
Gig work
The most visible second income is the delivery rider, and its economics are getting harder. The pay behind each order has been falling for years. GrabFood paid 60 baht per order when it launched in 2018 and now pays about 30 baht in Bangkok; LINE MAN started at 62 baht in 2020 and has cut its Bangkok rate to the same level, according to Rocket Media Lab.
In March 2026, as fuel prices climbed, riders told Thai PBS their daily takings had dropped from around 500 baht to 200 baht. Earlier research by the Just Economy and Labor Institute, published on New Mandala, put rider earnings at 15,000 to 40,000 baht a month, with the higher figure reached only by working longer hours than a full-time job. No government agency even records how many riders there are.
Not all gig work is delivery. The same move toward task-based, pay-per-job work covers ride-hailing, online freelancing, and local services, from cleaning to repairs. Platforms such as gigit, a Thai marketplace where identity-verified workers take on posted tasks for an agreed price, are trying to give this kind of work more structure than an opaque per-trip algorithm offers.
Selling Live on Social Media
The lowest-capital route is selling straight from a phone on Facebook or TikTok. Social commerce now accounts for 22.25% of online sales channels in Thailand, with Facebook ahead of TikTok and Instagram, the ETDA found. It needs no shopfront and no inventory system, only an audience and a live video, which is why live selling has become a common evening earner for people with a following and a few products to move.
A related route is affiliate selling, where a person earns commission by promoting someone else’s goods. Only 18% of Thai online businesses currently use affiliates, but another 36% want to, and the ETDA found it can lift sales by as much as half. For someone with an audience but no stock, it turns attention into income.
Cooking and Selling Food
The oldest second income in Thailand is food. Selling cooked meals, from a home kitchen, a cart, or a roadside stall, has long been the default way to earn on the side, and it sits squarely in the informal economy that already employs more than half the workforce.
The appeal has not changed: Thais spend heavily on ready-made food, so demand is steady, and the start-up cost can be as little as a wok and a place to set up. Neither has the weakness. The work is informal and unprotected, the hours are long, and the margins are thin.
The Income Question
Each of these extra income channels points to the same problem: a regular wage that can no longer cover the full month for many people. A relief programme can restructure a debt, but it cannot top up a wage.
The Bank of Thailand’s measures are bringing the debt ratio down slowly, yet the borrowing that keeps growing is the kind households take on simply to get through the month. Until incomes recover, the online shop, the evening live sale, and the delivery shift will stay less a choice than a necessity.
