VietNamNet Bridge – Nguyen Dai Dong, director of the department of employment at the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, spoke to Thoi bao Kinh te (Viet Nam Economic Times) about labour shortages and job growth.


Employment remains an urgent issue as job quality and sustainability and efficiency of job creation remain low. What are the reasons?
In my opinion, training is failing to meet market demands, leading to a low quality of human resources. Up to 70-80 per cent of vocational training programmes still focus on short-term training.

It is forecast that we need to provide vocational training for 40-45 per cent of the total number of new workers by 2020 in order to meet socio-economic targets.

Many businesses find it difficult to employ more workers since the end of last year while many workers remain unemployed. Is it because our policies are ineffective so that worker supply and demand is out of kilter?


We get a "virtual" labour shortage from time to time when many businesses announce they want to employ a large number of workers and complain that they are finding it hard to find new workers. But it is not completely true.

In 2010, the Employment Department undertook fact-finding tours of localities' labour demands and also asked them to report on the situation.

Many businesses had advertised to employ five to ten times more workers than they needed, giving the appearance of a labour shortage.

Also, competition among businesses led to the use of various methods to attract workers, causing workers to quit one job to move to another with better conditions. In other cases firms continued advertising for workers after the jobs had been filled, also giving the impression of a labour shortage.

In fact, only 46 per cent of the total demand for workers last year was for new jobs while the remainder were replacing labour that had changed employers, particularly those in the footwear and garments and textiles sectors.

Also, a number of firms employed new workers to replace former employees in order to avoid paying social insurance. Some firms had unattractive salary policies and were constantly employing unskilled workers to replace workers who left because the salaries were too low.

Which sectors need workers?


Sectors that require skilled workers, such as in information technology, banking and finance and services industries, have a steady demand. However, it is essential to focus more on vocational training. In fact, industrial production need more skilled workers than university graduates, particularly in industrial and export processing zones.


VietNamNet/Viet Nam News