VietNamNet Bridge – VietnamWorks in its latest data revealed on Tuesday reported a significant improvement in online employment demand in the second quarter, particularly for the retail and wholesale, pharmaceutical and biotech and insurance sectors.

The country’s largest online recruitment provider said in its Online Employment Report that the labor demand on the website in the April-June period grew 14% over the same period last year.

“Overall we saw a robust increase of 14% in online employment demand in the second quarter of 2013 compared to the same quarter last year… Our Q2 numbers followed the increasing trend from Q1 and hopefully solidified the growth foundations for the rest of 2013,” said Jonah Levey, founder and chairman of VietnamWorks.

One of the important findings in VietnamWorks’s second Online Employment Report is the whopping increase of 85% in job listings in the retail and wholesale sector in the second quarter compared to a year ago.

“While the general word-around-town has retail truly suffering, this has not been reflected in our data for the quarter where we saw job listings almost double in the period,” Levey said.

He did not clarify the reason why the increase in job listings was in stark contrast to the country’s stagnant retail sales growth rate. However, property service provider Savills Vietnam touched on part of the retail market in HCMC, which is the country’s economic hub.

In its review of the retail market in HCMC in the second quarter, Savills Vietnam said HCMC’s total retail sales in the first half of this year registered a year-on-year rise of 8.1%, which was lower than 8.9% last year and 8.8% in 2011.

VietnamWorks’s data indicated the retail and wholesale industry was the best for job seekers given the incredible growth rate of 85% in job listings, followed by pharmaceutical and biotech (35%), insurance (27%), customer service (25%) and consulting (24%).

In contrast, oil and gas, banking, civil construction, architecture and interior design, and human resources experienced declines of 23%, 10%, 4%, 2% and 2% respectively in the second quarter. These industries also fared poorly in the first quarter.

“As the banking sector is coping with economic difficulties by cutting staff, increasing required competencies towards applicants, raising productivity, it has not only witnessed a high decline in job postings but also the biggest decrease in job seeker supply,” Levey commented.

The company’s data showed competitiveness remained the hottest for positions in administration, accounting/finance, and import/export roles. “We typically see the highest numbers of applications per job and the most job seekers specifying those industries as desired employers,” Levey said.

Other key findings revealed Danang as the best city in the nation to find a job in the second quarter, ahead of Binh Duong and Hanoi. Bac Ninh also repeated a huge increase in online labor demand (53%) where several large investments saw a spike in demand for talent, followed by Danang (34%) and Binh Duong (31%).

Source: SGT