Navigos Search has reported that many Vietnamese enterprises have been facing big difficulties since 2022, affecting the labor market.

At least 50 percent of businesses said they are facing a revenue decrease. In some industries, 90 percent of businesses have been heavily impacted. As a result, many enterprises have had to lay off and cut workers’ wages. Some businesses are still seeking new workers, but the requirements for candidates have become different from in the previous period, according to Ngo Thi Ngoc Lan from Navigos.

Lan, in charge of the northern market, said previously the candidates who got 5-6/10 scores still had opportunities to be employed, but now, candidates with such modest scores don’t have any opportunities.

In general, enterprises only accept candidates with 8 or 9 scores, which means that they not only can undertake the work, but also have the capability of satisfying the requirements of jobs in the future.

The competition has become stiffer. Previously, one vacancy would attract about 20 candidates. But now, the number of applicants may be up to 60. 

Mai Thuy Hang, deputy CEO of Sun Group, said one of the reasons for businesses to set higher requirements for candidates is that final consumers are getting more demanding about the products and services businesses provide.

If enterprises have one traditional product or service, it needs to improve the product or service in order to provide more value to customers, have more reasonable selling prices and provide more experiences.

And in order to do that, businesses need to have high technologies and qualified staff.

“The requirements for human resources are more diverse, multi-dimensional and complex. Workers not only have good skills and deep knowledge, they also have the ability of connecting all the technologies and conditions to solve the problems of clients and businesses at different moments, with every group and every geographical area,” Hang said.

Hoang Nam Tien, who has 30 years of experience in managing FPT’s subsidiaries, including FPT Software, FPT Telecom and FPT University, noted that young people now understand that choosing occupation seems to be even more important than having a higher education level.

Tien said factory workers in many localities have become unemployed because robots have replaced them to take increasingly complicated works.

“Four years ago when I said I believed that robots would replace workers in Vietnam, many people showed their doubt about the prediction. However, it is obvious that robots which were valued $400,000 in the past, now can be bought at just $30,000. The robots can do 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year, and they don’t demand wage increases and job promotions,” Tien said.

“I know many workers who have lost jobs though they are still very young,” Tien added.

Tien believes that the workers in many other business fields, including some journalists and coders are also likely to be replaced by AI (artificial intelligence).

Regarding journalism, Tien predicted that daily news will be written by AI rather than journalists. By that time, the major work of journalists will be conducting investigation and research.

Previously, an IT engineer after graduation just needed to be proficient in two languages, including foreign language (English or Japanese) and programming language to be able to obtain a good job with good pay. But this is no longer true today.

If they are only good at a programming language and foreign language, they will still lose jobs because the command lines written by Java and C++ now can be taken from ChatGPT, and there is no need to code.

Therefore, Tien stressed that workers have to study and improve their knowledge. To avoid unemployment, workers need retraining and in-depth training regularly, not just training for 2-3 months at factory before officially working.

Meanwhile, journalists also need to continue studying to upgrade their knowledge and skills to qualify to new levels. As for IT graduates, they need to learn Big Data, AI and blockchain as well.

“Today's workers must be different and the saying 'lifelong learning' is now a practical requirement," Tien said.

Van Anh