Restricted occupations for foreigners in Thailand: the 40 jobs, explained

How many occupations are restricted — and under which law

As of June 2026, Thailand restricts 40 occupations for foreign workers. They are split across four lists: 27 absolutely prohibited, and 13 that are conditional.

The controlling law is the Royal Decree (Emergency Decree) on Managing the Work of Aliens B.E. 2560 (2017), as amended by Decree No. 2 B.E. 2561 (2018). The Department of Employment then issued the restricted-occupation notification in a four-list structure dated B.E. 2561 (2018), refined around April 2020.

One number you will still see on older expat sites is “39 restricted occupations.” That figure belongs to the repealed 1979 Working of Aliens Act. Under the current decree the count is 40. We also reject the “20-occupation / 3 February 2022” claim that floats around a handful of low-quality pages: no authoritative source supports it.

Source: Royal Decree on Managing the Work of Aliens B.E. 2560 (2017), as amended by Decree No. 2 B.E. 2561 (2018); Department of Employment restricted-occupation notification (four-list structure, B.E. 2561). See the thailand.go.th official guide and the Bangkok Post special report.

The four lists, at a glance

The cleanest way to read the restriction is by list. List 1 is the hard wall; Lists 2 to 4 are conditional, each with a different condition attached.

Source: Department of Employment restricted-occupation notification under the Royal Decree B.E. 2560; structure dated B.E. 2561 (2018), refined ~April 2020 (B.E. 2563). Cross-checked against The Nation and Acclime Thailand.

List 1: the 27 absolutely prohibited occupations

List 1 reserves 27 occupations for Thai nationals only. No work permit can open them to a foreigner. The category was built to protect lower-skilled and culturally specific Thai trades. The headline examples that secondary sources consistently confirm are:

• General manual / unskilled labour
• Driving (motor vehicles and non-mechanically-powered carriers)
• Retail sales and street vending
• Hairdressing, barbering and beauty work
• Thai massage
• Wood carving
• Tour-guiding and travel organisation
• Clerical and secretarial work

That is eight of the 27; the remainder cover further traditional crafts and protected trades.

The thing to take from List 1 for our purposes: domestic work is not on it. Neither cleaning, nor cooking, nor childcare, nor elderly care appears anywhere in the absolutely-prohibited list.

Lists 2–4: the 13 conditional occupations

The remaining 13 are not closed to foreigners. Each list attaches a condition:

• List 2 (3 occupations) — accountancy, civil engineering and architecture are open only under an international agreement. The relevant route here is the ASEAN Mutual Recognition framework for professionals.
• List 3 (8 occupations) — skilled and semi-skilled trades (agriculture, construction, several traditional manufacturing crafts) are open to a foreigner working for a qualifying employer.
• List 4 (2 occupations) — generic “labour” and shop-front sales are open only through the MOU / G2G channel, with an employer.

List 4 is where the domestic-worker question actually lives, even though “housework” is not named: the MOU channel that List 4 references is the same legal pipeline that lets Myanmar, Lao, Cambodian and Vietnamese nationals work as maids and carers.

So can a foreigner work as a maid in Thailand?

This is the question most readers arrive with, and the answer has two layers that get confused constantly.

Layer one: housework is not a prohibited occupation. Do not let anyone tell you that “maid work is reserved for Thais.” It is not on List 1, and it is not on Lists 2 to 4. Cabinet resolutions explicitly permit MOU-nationality workers to do domestic work. The occupational-prohibition argument simply does not apply to housework.

Layer two: the real barrier is nationality plus the work-permit framework. Thailand limits low-skilled and domestic foreign labour to four MOU-partner nationalities: Myanmar, Lao PDR, Cambodia and Vietnam. If you hold one of those passports, you can be hired as a domestic worker through the MOU process. If you hold any other passport — Western, Filipino, Indian, anything outside the four — there is no lawful low-skilled channel for you to work as a maid, even though the occupation itself is not banned.

For the Filipino case specifically, the answer is no on both sides of the border: Thailand has no MOU with the Philippines, and the Philippine government bans direct hire of household-service workers to Thailand. We cover that in detail in Can a Filipino legally work as a maid in Thailand?

The MOU channel — the only legal route for a foreign maid

For Myanmar, Lao, Cambodian and Vietnamese nationals, the legal pathway is the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) / G2G labour-import process. It is the only lawful way for a foreign domestic worker to hold a job in a Thai household, and the mechanics are the same whether the placement is a private home or a factory.

In outline, the employer files a demand letter with the provincial employment office, a name list comes from the origin-country labour ministry, the worker enters through a designated checkpoint, attends a one-day orientation, and is issued a work permit. The permit runs two years, renewable once, with a four-year maximum before a cooling-off period. The employer pays the statutory fees; the worker should be charged only for a narrow set of fixed government costs.

We walk through every stage, the real costs, and the broker traps in the MOU process explainer for Myanmar and Lao workers.

Prohibited vs. conditional vs. permitted-via-MOU

Putting the three categories side by side makes the domestic-work answer obvious:

Source: Royal Decree B.E. 2560 (2017) restricted-occupation lists; Cabinet resolutions permitting MOU-nationality domestic work. Domestic work appears on no prohibited or conditional list. See thailand.go.th.

What happens if the rules are broken

Working in a reserved occupation, or working with no permit at all, carries real penalties — though they are lower today than they were when the 2017 decree first landed.

• Foreigner working without a permit: a fine of THB 5,000–50,000 plus deportation, with no prison term (Section 101). The old figures of THB 2,000–100,000 and up to five years in prison were the 2017 originals and were softened by the 2018 amendment.
• Employer, first offence: THB 10,000–100,000 per worker for hiring a foreigner without a permit (Section 102, first paragraph).
• Employer, repeat offence: up to one year in prison and/or THB 50,000–200,000 per worker, plus a three-year ban on hiring foreigners (Section 102, second paragraph).

You will still see the figure “up to THB 800,000 per worker” quoted on many expat sites. That was the superseded 2017 penalty for hiring a foreigner specifically into a Thai-only restricted occupation; it was lowered by the 28 March 2018 amendment and is not the current generic no-permit penalty. Do not rely on it.

Source: Royal Decree on Managing the Work of Aliens B.E. 2560 (2017), as amended by Decree No. 2 B.E. 2561 (2018), ss. 101 and 102 (current figures). See thailand.go.th and LawPlus on the 2018 amendment.

Once legally hired, the labour-rights floor still applies

A point employers miss: the restricted-occupation rules and the MOU framework govern whether a foreigner can work. They say nothing about how that worker must be treated once hired. That is a separate body of law.

Since 30 April 2024, Ministerial Regulation No. 15 (B.E. 2567) extends minimum wage, a written contract, a paid weekly rest day, paid public holidays, paid sick leave and working-hour limits to domestic workers — Thai and migrant alike. So a lawfully hired Burmese maid in Bangkok is entitled to the same provincial minimum wage (currently ฿400/day in Bangkok) as a Thai one. The full breakdown is in our MR 15 explainer.