Delegates at the Vietnam Labor Forum 2019 - PHOTO: VNA

According to the report, entitled “Decent work and sustainable development goals in Vietnam”, delivered at the Vietnam Labor Forum 2019 held in Hanoi today, November 27, the labor market participation rate is very high in Vietnam, at over 70% for women and 81% for men, news site Vietnamplus reported.

In addition, the number of jobs in the manufacturing sector in Vietnam has been higher since 2014 than in other countries in the Southeast Asian and Asia-Pacific regions.

The country’s employment distribution by skill level showed that 53% of jobs nationwide require medium skills, 12% require high skills and 36% require low skills.

At the forum, themed “Future of work: The Choice of Vietnam,” jointly held by the ILO and the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, Valentina Barcucci, a labor economist at the ILO Country Office for Vietnam, said the group of upper-middle-income countries which Vietnam expects to join by 2030 has higher proportions of medium- and high-skill jobs than in Vietnam.

In Vietnam, the number of vulnerable jobs tends to fall because of the country’s industrialization. However, up to 54% of laborers were still in jobs considered vulnerable last year.

Therefore, ILO experts recommended that the Vietnamese Government work to improve social welfare policies and build modern employment relationships.

In addition, laborers should be put at the center to ensure the sustainable development of the local labor market. Further, the improvement of the quality of jobs must become a priority for the Government.

Despite a high number of laborers (56 million people) and young laborers, the proportion of laborers who have been trained accounts for only 23% of Vietnam’s total labor market, said Deputy Minister of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs Le Van Thanh.

Moreover, the vocational training structure is unreasonable and fails to match the country’s economic structure, leading to the uneven distribution of laborers in different sectors.

In the coming periods, the Government will amend its vocational training policies to call on the greater participation of enterprises to ensure that laborers can meet the demands of the market, Thanh added.

At the forum, Dr Chang-Hee Lee, ILO Country Director for Vietnam, affirmed that the future of work in Vietnam will be decided by the Vietnamese Government, and Vietnam has improved its laborers’ skills, offering widespread coverage of social welfare and modernized employment relations.

The main factors affecting the labor market are improvements in technology, especially in the fourth industrial revolution, a global trade system with stronger connections, an aging population and climate change, Lee noted.

Other experts attending the forum agreed that Vietnam has successfully maintained its high growth rate, despite volatility in the global market. SGT

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