Nearly 1.3 million workers withdraw social insurance at once, nearly 50% return to continue paying

Most young workers withdraw social insurance at one time.

According to statistics from Vietnam Social Security, from January 1, 2016 to August 31, 2024, the whole country had more than 1,285 million people receiving one-time social insurance but then returning to participate in social insurance, reserving the social insurance payment period of 631,128 people.

In these cases, employees are not allowed to retain their previous years of participation but must recalculate from the beginning, due to withdrawal of funds.

Mr. Dao Duy Hien, Deputy Director of the Vietnam Social Insurance Policy Implementation Department, said that workers who withdraw their social insurance contributions at one time are mainly in the non-state sector, due to work pressure and high job-hopping frequency. The age group withdrawing their social insurance contributions at one time is mainly between the ages of 20 and under 40, accounting for about 78%.

The main reason is that young workers consider their immediate needs more important than paying social insurance for enough time to receive pension. In addition, the salary at enterprises for this age is not high, leading them to often choose to withdraw social insurance at one time to solve financial difficulties.

A labor and salary expert said that young people withdrawing their social insurance at once will make retirement insurance meaningless, leaving great consequences for workers when they retire without a pension to cover their living expenses.

According to labor experts, the policy of withdrawing insurance in one lump sum under the previous Regime 176 left a painful lesson for those who withdrew in one lump sum. When they got old, they had no pension, so life was very difficult.

Therefore, the social insurance policy must retain workers in the system, especially there must be support policies, creating conditions for young workers to overcome immediate difficulties, aiming to have enough time to pay insurance to receive pension.

“When you are old, a low pension is better than nothing, but the important thing is that when you are sick, the health insurance system will support you and help reduce the burden on your children and grandchildren,” said the expert.

New law limits one-time withdrawals

According to the Social Insurance Law 2024, effective from July 1, 2025, employees who have paid social insurance before the effective date of the law, if after 12 months they do not participate in compulsory or voluntary social insurance and the social insurance payment period is less than 20 years, can withdraw social insurance one time. However, after this period, they will no longer be able to withdraw social insurance one time.

The revised Law on Social Insurance only allows one-time social insurance benefits in the following cases: People who are old enough to receive pension but have not paid social insurance for enough years; people who have settled abroad; or people who are suffering from diseases such as cancer, paralysis, decompensated cirrhosis, severe tuberculosis, AIDS; people with a labor capacity reduction of 81% or more; and people with extremely severe disabilities.

According to the provisions of the Social Insurance Law 2024, the one-time social insurance benefit is calculated based on the number of years of social insurance contributions, each year is calculated as follows:

Equal to 1.5 times the average monthly income for social insurance contribution for the year before 2014.

In case the social insurance payment period is both before and after 2014 and the payment period before 2014 has odd months, those odd months will be transferred to the social insurance payment period from 2014 onwards to calculate the one-time social insurance benefit.

Equal to 2 times the average monthly income for social insurance contributions for the years of contribution from 2014 onwards.

In case the social insurance payment period is less than one year, the benefit level is equal to the amount paid but not more than twice the average income used as the basis for social insurance payment.

The one-time social insurance benefit level of the subjects supported by the State according to the provisions of Clause 2 of this Article does not include the amount of state budget support for voluntary social insurance payment.

Employees who have withdrawn their social insurance contributions once but have not yet received unemployment insurance benefits will still be retained. Later, when the employee goes to work and continues to participate in unemployment insurance, the previously paid time will be added together.