VietNamNet Bridge – The first six months of 2015 saw recruitment demand rising to a three-year high and labor supply improving as well, according to VietnamWorks’ HR Insider Online Recruitment Market Report.

The report released by the leading online job service provider in Vietnam last Friday showed in the first half of this year labor demand grew faster than labor supply, which rebounded after retreating last year.

Gaku Echizenya, chief executive officer of VietnamWorks, said in the report that recruitment demand leapt by 34% year-on-year and demand was high in various sectors in January-June.

“Job categories with traditionally high recruitment demand like information technology

(IT)-software and accounting all grew rapidly,” Echizenya said. “Job-seekers today have more options than ever for their dream jobs.”

According to the report, labor demand has been going up by 5% in 2013, 25% last year and 34% this year. Most job categories with high recruitment demand in the past years have all grown by at least 20%.

The report said IT-software offered 1,200 more jobs compared to last year and architecture/interior design provided 600 more jobs in the first half.

Overall, the job categories that grew their demand the most are architecture/interior design (up 98%), consulting (95%), retail/wholesale (58%), advertising/promotion/public relations (51%) and product/process (49%), the report said.

VietnamWorks said job demand expanded across job levels, with experienced level accounting for the biggest share of demand (66%). Meanwhile, the respective proportions of manager, team leader/supervisor, director and new graduate/entry levels were 16%, 12%, 3% and 3% in the period.

The company revealed a strong increase of 17% in labor supply. This suggested that labor supply growth was much better than the previous years and labor supply in Vietnam was on the rise.

“This means jobseekers have even fewer competitors this year than last year when they apply for jobs,” the report said.

Job categories with major contributions to the labor supply recovery were accounting, administrative/clerical, architecture/interior design, and export-import.

The significant recovery of labor supply has given job-seekers more options this year than last year though some job categories remain “extremely competitive.”

“The ‘hottest’ category is, as usual, accounting, with a very high competition rate of 1/85. Meanwhile, some other job categories such as education/training, pharmaceutical/biotech, arts/design, agriculture/forestry, medical/healthcare and airlines/tourism/hotel are less competitive,” the report said.

The job competition rate among the cities and regions did not vary much in the period, according to the report. The localities with the highest competition rates for job-seekers were Bien Hoa (1/59), HCMC (1/54), Can Tho (1/54), Danang (1/51) and Binh Duong (1/42).

The top five localities in terms of labor demand in the period were Hanoi, HCMC, Bac Ninh, Binh Duong and Danang.

“In the first half of 2015, HCMC had the second largest number of job openings and the largest number of job applicants, making it the center of recruitment and job hunting activities in Vietnam,” the report said.