VietNamNet Bridge - Official reports show the percentage of unemployed young people in urban areas is higher than in rural areas and the proportion of unemployed workers with bachelor’s degree or other higher education degrees is higher than untrained workers.

The latest report about the employment rate in the first six months of the year released by the General Statistics Office (GSO) showed that 1.12 million workers had been reported unemployed by the end of the second quarter, an increase of 6,000 over the first quarter. The general unemployment rate reached 2.06 percent.

The unemployment rate in urban areas was twice as much as the rate in rural areas (3.26 percent vs 1.84 percent). 

The report showed that the workers aged 15-24 accounted for nearly 50 percent of total jobless workers.

The proportion of unemployed workers among young people was far higher than the country’s general unemployment rate (7.07 percent vs 2.06 percent), and the gap was especially high in urban areas.

Official reports show the percentage of unemployed young people in urban areas is higher than in rural areas and the proportion of unemployed workers with bachelor’s degree or other higher education degrees is higher than untrained workers.

At least 11.7 percent of young people in urban areas are unemployed, which means that more than one young person in every 10 young workers in the areas had no job.

Analysts also pointed out that the number of unemployed workers with bachelor’s degree and higher education had peaked.

Of 1.12 million unemployed workers, over 500,000 had bachelor’s degree. This means that four out of every 10 unemployed workers finished universities. The proportion was double the previous quarter when only two out of every 10 unemployed workers finished universities.

Doan Mau Diep, Deputy Minister of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), noted that with the current training scale, Vietnam produces 400,000 workers with bachelor’s degree and higher education levels each year, while about 170,000 workers from this group are unemployed.

Many cooks and mechanics have the monthly income of VND20-30 million, or VND40-50 million. Meanwhile, many bachelor’s degree graduates and PhDs cannot find the jobs of VND5-7 million a month.

Explaining the high percentage of unemployed workers with a bachelor’s degree, many education experts believe the problem lies in the oversupply and the massive establishment of universities in recent years.

Others argue that Vietnam still needs to scale up the university training, saying that the proportion of 24,000 PhDs out of 90 million in total population is very modest with 3,609,000 PhDs out of 322 million people in the US.