VietNamNet Bridge – Unemployment rates are regularly reported by government agencies, but the state General Statistics Office (GSO) doubts the figures.

The GSO has many times criticized ministries and branches for unreliable statistics and reports.

But the National Assembly’s Economics Committee is doubtful about the unemployment rate figures released by GSO.  

The Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) sometimes has to correct the information about the unemployment rate it listed in previous bulletins.

Dr. Le Dang Doanh, a renowned economist, commented that the official figures about the unemployment rate are unreliable because Vietnam does not have a statistical system which updates numbers of people who have lost jobs.

Vietnam is known as the country with the lowest unemployment rate in the world.

The unemployment rate of four percent would be considered an “ideal figure” in other economies.

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, a developing country which has been undergoing an economic recession for the last few years, the rate was 2.2 percent only in 2013.

The unemployment rates never exceeded 3 percent in the last few years: 1.99 percent in 2012, 2.27 percent in 2011 and 2.88 percent in 2010.

Economists commented that the figures are “unbelievable” if noting that hundreds of thousands of businesses have been dissolved in the last few years amid the economic recession.

In principle, lower GDP growth rates in the last few years and lower investments both would lead to higher unemployment rates, especially when the labor supply has been increasingly steadily year after year.

A report showed that 864,300 people joined the labor force in 2013.

Analysts attributed surprisingly low unemployment rates in Vietnam to a “special” statistical method used by state management agencies.

For example, a family has 10 members, including father, mother, two sons, two daughters and their wives and husbands. The father and mother are old and they are not of working age, so they are not listed as redundant workers.

The two daughters-in-law have been staying at home taking care of small children and housework since they gave birth. They are also not listed as redundant, because they “did not want to have a job”.

The two sons-in-law have been jobless for a long time and they are not listed as unemployed, either.

None of the remaining four family members have full time jobs. The elder brother last week got a job to repair water pipes at a neighbor’s house and was paid for two hours of work. The others also earn money from irregular jobs they sometimes receive.

But all of the 10 members of the household are listed as “employed”, in accordance with the currently used statistical method.

Only in 2013 did the GSO give an officials definition of unemployment. GSO’s former General Director Do Thuc said unemployed workers in Vietnam were those who did not work at all in a week. This means that people who work, even for one hour a week, will not be considered unemployed.

Chi Mai