Workers in Binh Son district, the central province of Quang Ngai, participate in a high-tech welding apprenticeship at DooSan Vina Training Centre in Dung Quat Economic Zone. (Photo: VNA) Only about 11% of the domestic labour force is highly skilled while 26% aretrained workers with degrees and certificates, reported the Ministry of Labour,Invalids and Social Affairs.
After years of economic reform, the labour force has doubled, from 27 millionin 1986 to 51.4 million in 2022. Vietnam’s population is in the “golden age”but the quality of labour is "not yet golden", as the rate of trainedlabourers is still low, according to a ministry official.
The Vietnamese labour market has an excess of low-skilled people and a shortageof high-tech workers.
Skill limitations make it difficult for Vietnamese workers to switch jobs,especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, while the social welfare service isnot strong enough to help workers overcome difficulties.
If training does not improve, Vietnamese workers will increasingly lose theircompetitiveness.
According to Nguyen Xuan Son, executive director of Manpower Group Vietnam,only 8.96% of Vietnamese workers have the ability to work remotely in the contextof businesses increasing this type of work after the pandemic.
High-skilled workers still need to improve both professional and soft skills.
Notably, only 5% of workers have English proficiency, which is not enough tocompete with regional workers.
The average income of Vietnamese workers is about 300 USD, much lower thanworkers in the region at 1,992 USD and the world at 2,114 USD.
According to Son, "cheap" labour is not only an attraction but also aweakness of Vietnamese workers when foreign enterprises put new technologiesinto practice.
A recent survey showed that about 57% of enterprises face difficulty inrecruiting high-quality human resources.
Many businesses express concern about the shortage of high-quality humanresources, as they are in need of recruiting thousands when expandingproduction.
Nguyen Viet Quang, the CEO of Vingroup, said that in the next two years, hisbusiness would need about 100,000 employees, of which 20% are senior personnelwho have received at least university degrees.
The Government should soon have policies to support enterprises in recruitingand training high-quality personnel.
In the long term, enterprises, through the existing education system and theirbusiness activities spreading across the country, would be ready to supportpersonnel training, Quang said.
Meanwhile, PouYuen, one of the largest export sports shoe manufacturers in HoChi Minh City, is having difficulty recruiting after it lost about 5% ofworkers after the pandemic.
Thai Van Tong, the CEO of PouYuen, said that in the coming time, his companywould promote production automation and data digitisation processes that wouldrequire a large number of skilled and high-qualified workers in the fields ofmold engineering, automation and information technology.
In the context of a shortage of skilled workers, Tong suggested that theGovernment should create favourable conditions to connect with vocationaltraining schools and invest more resources in the southern provinces to createskilled human resources.
From the authorities' perspective, chairman of the People's Committee of BacGiang province Le Anh Duong said: “General education in the past time has beeninvested in and achieved many positive results while vocational education hasnot yet been paid proper attention and that has led to a shortage of skilledworkers.”
“Therefore, Bac Giang Province identifies improving the quality of humanresources and developing an integrated labour market as one of the necessarybreakthroughs,” said Duong.
“We focus on promulgating mechanisms and policies on vocational training and education,forecasting labour supply and demand, supporting enterprises to recruitworkers, ensuring social security policies for the wave of migrant workers,” hesaid.
“Among more than 300,000 employees working in industrial parks (IZs), up to onethird are migrant workers, so the province pays attention to solutions todevelop a sustainable labour market,” the chairman said.
Duong also suggested that it was necessary to have connection between generaland vocational education.
"The fact is that at present, the general education goes in-depth butvocational education has not been properly developed."
“Mechanisms and policies for teachers of education facilities also need to besimilar. Along with that, it is necessary to have a policy on vocational trainingfor children of ethnic minorities so as to achieve the dual goals of raisingthe people's intellectual level, creating jobs for rural workers, andsustainable poverty alleviation."
Dr. Juergen Hartwig, a representative of the German development agency, GIZ,said that Vietnam’s development opportunities would depend on the quality ofworkers.
Human resources are the key to the country's labour productivity. The marketstructure is changing at a rapid pace, requiring more skill types. Therefore, Vietnammust have flexible policies, according to the representative.
To develop a sustainable labour market, the Prime Minister assigned theMinistry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs to soon draft a resolution ondeveloping a labour market that has efficiency, flexibility, modernity,sustainability and integration.
It has to focus on solutions to raise awareness about the labour market andconsider labour as a special commodity in order to have appropriate mechanismsand policies and labour mobility, and to comprehensively reform the vocationaltraining and education system.
Vocational training should be comprehensively renovated in an open, flexibleand effective way to improve the quality of human resources, take advantage ofthe opportunity of the so-called “golden population structure" serving theprocess of economic restructure, industrialisation and modernisation of thecountry in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution./.
VNA
