Work, markets, seasons, and measurement

Economy and livelihoods

Livelihoods combine agriculture, jhum, wage work, trade, public employment, tourism, care, and migration in patterns that vary by place and season. Income measures do not capture every cost or contribution.

Research cutoff: 4 September 2026. Generated visuals are editorial context, not evidence.

A hill market with bananas, pineapples, turmeric, vegetables, woven baskets, goods crates, vendors, and customers — Production and exchange connect crops, transport, markets, water, and varied livelihoods.

explanation

Livelihoods overlap across seasons and systems

Livelihood categories overlap across seasons, and important disaggregation is still missing.

Jhum and mixed cultivation

Jhum may be livelihood, land use, and tenure evidence at once. An eight-village 2014 study explains mechanisms, but its purposive sample cannot establish regional prevalence.

Horticulture and market access

Fruit, vegetables, spices, livestock, storage, road condition, transport time, and seasonal prices form one chain. A road or market shed is an input, not proof of higher net income.

Lake and river livelihoods

Official Kaptai production is a useful output series. It does not establish species health, fisher earnings, access rights, or distribution.

Forestry and natural resources

Employment, collection, plantation, customary use, and extraction overlap with land law and ecology. Production values cannot substitute for tenure or sustainability evidence.

Wage and nonfarm work

Public employment, construction, retail, transport, services, and small enterprises matter, but no current CHT-wide labour, wage, SME, or remittance series was located.

Tourism, trade, and mobility

A 2017 destination plan used estimated visitor spending and target local-retention shares. These are planning assumptions, not observed income outcomes.

Coverage is uneven

The main structural datasets refer to the 2019 Agriculture Census and embedded 2013 Economic Census context. Current income, wage, border-trade, tourism, extraction, and beneficiary-distribution evidence remains incomplete.

Sources: MS0222–MS0224, MS0228, MS0229, and MS0275.

A market worktable with seasonal produce, woven baskets, bamboo craft materials, a repair toolkit, a mobile phone, and transport crates — Households combine farming, wage work, trade, craft, transport, remittances, and seasonal strategies.

Measure output, work, income, and effects separately

Output, value, income, employment, migration, and environmental effects answer different questions.

Read the wording together with its date, geography, definition, source type, review state, and any unresolved disagreement. A concise interface should not compress those conditions into a single confidence score.