50% of firms eye more recruitment in Vietnam this year: sector report

More than half of businesses in Vietnam plan to boost recruitment this year, indicating positive developments in the labor market, according to a new report by TopCV, a popular human resources company in the country.

The report, featuring responses from over 2,200 businesses and over 3,000 laborers collected between December 2022 and March 2023, pointed out the biggest hikes in recruitment demand belong to sectors of import-export with 84%, pharmacy-healthcare-biotechnology with 63.6%, and agriculture with 62.5%. Besides, 27.9% of companies said they would raise their budget for recruitment.

By the end of 2022, 40.5% of firms faced a lack of laborers, down 2.7 percentage points year-on-year. The most severe shortages were in sectors of insurance, e-commerce, education-training, especially for their departments of sales, information technology, and marketing.

The three departments were the hardest jobs to recruit for among 40%, 23.1%, and 15.2% of survey respondents, respectively, TopCV noted. They were also the most difficult jobs for retaining staff with 44%, 15.1%, and 13.2%, respectively. Respondents attributed these issues to the low number of applicants and job seekers not meeting job requirements.

Employees with at least three years of experience were the most sought-after group with 40.8% of firms, followed by inexperienced ones with 40.6%.

TopCV showed the low potential of current jobs to be the most popular reason for resignation, with 66.1% of respondents, followed by inadequate benefits with 46.9%, and unclear working policies and procedures with 35.1%. Other popular reasons were corporate culture, relations with colleagues, firms streamlining staff, and negative information about firms’ performances.

Vietnam’s unemployment rate fell 0.21 percentage points year-on-year to 2.25% Q1/2023, while its workforce grew to 52.2 million, up by 1.04 million or 2.03%, according to the General Statistics Office.

The country recorded 23 labor strikes in the quarter, down from 64 in the same period of 2022, including 20 at foreign-invested enterprises in the southern region, General Confederation of Labor data shows.