The labor market continues to face many difficulties.

The decrease in orders has affected workers in the industrial sector, especially the textile and wood processing industries.

Despite some positive signs, the labor market is still facing many difficulties and challenges amid the prolonged impact of overlapping negative shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and declining global aggregate demand.

"For the labor market to recover sustainably, ministries, sectors and localities need to promote the implementation of solutions to develop human resources, especially high-quality human resources to meet the development requirements of industries and fields...", General Director of the General Statistics Office, Ms. Nguyen Thi Huong affirmed.

Unsustainable labor market

The General Statistics Office said that although the labor force and the number of employed workers in general continued to increase since the third quarter of 2021 when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, in terms of labor quality, the development of the labor market is not sustainable.

Specifically, the labor force aged 15 and over in the second quarter of 2023 was 52.3 million people, an increase of more than 100,000 people compared to the previous quarter and 0.7 million people compared to the same period last year.

Besides, the number of people aged 15 and over employed in the second quarter of 2023 reached nearly 51.2 million people, an increase of 83,300 thousand people compared to the previous quarter and an increase of 691,400 thousand people compared to the same period last year.

The average income of workers in the second quarter of 2023 is 7 million VND. Compared to the same period in 2022, the lives of workers have improved, but the increase rate is not high compared to the growth rate of the second quarter of 2022.

However, the General Statistics Office also said that socio-economic activities have been restored, the rate of underutilized labor has decreased rapidly from 10.4% to 3.9% in the fourth quarter of 2022. This rate shows signs of increasing again in the first quarter of 2023 (4.5%) and remains at 4.3% in the second quarter of 2023 (equivalent to about 2.2 million people).

Not only that, labor is more market-oriented, as shown by the number of workers doing self-production and self-consumption work continuously decreasing over the quarters (from the third quarter of 2021 to present).

For developing countries like Vietnam, the number of workers doing self-production and self-consumption jobs ranges from 3-4 million people and reached a record high of 5.2 million people in the third quarter of 2021 due to social distancing and the complicated developments of COVID-19, workers left urban areas to return to rural areas to do self-production and self-consumption jobs.

"After the economic opening, this group of workers gradually left self-employment to look for stable jobs with better income, causing this rate to decrease over the quarters. This is also an inevitable trend of the market economy," said the leader of the General Statistics Office.

Pointing out the limitations of the labor market, Mr. Pham Hoai Nam, Director of the Department of Population and Labor Statistics (General Statistics Office) said that the number of employed workers in general continues to increase, but in terms of labor quality, the development of the labor market is not sustainable, workers' jobs are unstable, precarious, working conditions are not guaranteed and income is low.

The total number of people with informal employment (including workers in agricultural households) in the second quarter of 2023 was 33.3 million, an increase of 301,900 people compared to the previous quarter.

In addition, the pressure to lay off workers from businesses has created a strong shift of labor from the industrial and construction sectors (formal workers) to the service sector (mostly informal workers).

The General Statistics Office also pointed out that workers in the service sector accounted for the largest proportion with 39.7%, an increase of 349,000 people compared to the previous quarter; workers in the industrial and construction sectors accounted for 33.4%, a decrease of 242,000 people compared to the previous quarter; workers in the agriculture, forestry and fishery sector accounted for 27%, a decrease of 23,800 people compared to the previous quarter.

The decline in orders has affected the labor force in the industrial sector, especially the textile and garment industry, the wood processing industry, and the manufacturing of electronic products, computers, and optical products. The number of employees in these industries in the second quarter of 2023 decreased by 142,500, 16,900, and 30,200 people, respectively, compared to the previous quarter.

The General Statistics Office also pointed out that the labor market in the second quarter of 2023 could not maintain the recovery and improvement momentum as in the first quarters of 2022. The number of unemployed people in the age group in the second quarter of 2023 was about 940,700 people, an increase of 54,900 people compared to the previous quarter and an increase of 58,900 people compared to the same period last year.

"Labor in the Southeast region, which is home to many large-scale industrial parks (usually with the lowest unemployment rate in the country under normal conditions), will continue to be affected by unemployment from the first quarter of 2023 due to the concentration of many large enterprises with reduced orders," Mr. Pham Hoai Nam emphasized.

Human resource development

In general, the labor and employment situation in the second quarter of 2023 shows that the labor market is facing many difficulties and challenges.

Job consulting for workers

In order for the labor market to recover sustainably and ensure the lives of workers, General Director Nguyen Thi Huong said the General Statistics Office proposed a number of solutions such as the Government continuing to effectively implement policies to support businesses and workers, launching domestic stimulus programs, supporting trade promotion, finding and exploiting new markets and new orders for businesses.

Along with that, there are effective solutions to support businesses that lack capital, have high input material prices, have difficulty in selling products, and some industries and fields that are adversely affected by declining world market demand such as: leather and footwear, textiles, and electricity and electronics.

Director Pham Hoai Nam also said that ministries, branches and localities need to step up the implementation of solutions to develop human resources, especially high-quality human resources to meet the development requirements of industries and fields; arrange, organize, restructure and improve the training quality of vocational training institutions, ensure the supply of enough skilled workers to meet the requirements of socio-economic development; continue to implement policies to support training and retraining for workers to maintain employment.

"The Government continues to perfect the appropriate, gradually modern and transparent labor market management system connected to the national population database and other databases as a basis for building and organizing timely and effective implementation of labor supply and demand, employment and social security connections" - General Director Nguyen Thi Huong emphasized.

According to VNA