VietNamNet Bridge - The news that the IT sector offers the most competitive pay in Vietnam coincides with a report that Vietnam lacks IT professionals. 

The latest report on wages and job seekers’ behaviors in Vietnam released by VietnamWorks showed that IT is the industry that offers most competitive salary with the average starting monthly salary of VND15.77 million for 73 percent of job vacancies.

The report was prepared based on the statistics about the salaries offered for 45,000 job vacancies published on VietnamWorks.com in the first six months of the year.

Most of the office worker posts in Vietnam (57 percent of the job news published on VietnamWorks.com) have the starting salary of VND11.25 million a month, while 1/5 of the posts have relatively high salary offered, at VND22.5 million.

As for division heads and managers, the average pay is between VND22.52 million and VND45 million. The common salary for the post of director/CEO is VND67.5 million. 

There is no big gap in the salaries of new school graduates and the officers with several years’ experience. However, the pay is much higher for the posts from division head.

While most new school graduates struggle to find jobs and feel satisfied with modest pay, many companies are willing to pay higher than the average level to inexperienced workers.

The report showed that 21 percent of the posts for new school graduates have the pay of between VND15.77 million and VND22.5 million. This means that even inexperienced new school graduates still can expect the monthly pay of over VND15 million if they have excellent skills.

The report is the big differences in salaries of the workers in different industries. 

While the average salary of the ‘hot jobs’ like accountant, administration, production, marketing and sales officers is about VND5.64-11.25 million, the figure is VND15.77-22.5 million for IT professionals. 

Employers offer the monthly salary of over VND15.77 million for 73 percent of job vacancies on VietnamWorks.com to attract candidates. 

The high salaries for IT engineers are not a surprise at all. The strong development of technology and internet in recent years has led to the sharp increase in the demand for IT professionals, while the supply is short. 

Tien Phong newspaper cited a report as predicting that Vietnam could see a shortage of 500,000 IT professionals by 2020. In the last three years, the demand for the number of IT jobs has increased 47 percent each year on average. 

Pham Huy Hoang, deputy head of the IT Institute, an arm of the Hanoi University of Technology, said on Buu Dien that 50 percent of students finishing the Vietnam-Japan IT training program can be sent to Japan where they can earn VND50-60 million a month.

Nam Lich