ASEAN will pilot a free labor market for professionals in 2015.
If it works out then the program will be expanded to other parts of the labor market including both white collar and blue collar.
It is worth keeping in mind that " highly skilled human resources" includes many manual labour occupations requiring special training and experience such as automotive technicians, machinists, welders and carpenters.
Furthermore, even though individual ASEAN countries such as Thailand or the Philippines already have skilled workers of a certain type, opening up the labor market to competition across ASEAN will likely lead to an upgrade in skills and expertise across all of ASEAN.