This makesVietnam one of the fastest growing labour markets in Southeast Asia,just behind Indonesia and the Philippines , notes the report releasedrecently by the Institute of Labour Science and Social Affairs.
The economy is thus under pressure to create jobs, atask that could be hard given the current trend of low number of firmsregistered per capita and the fact most of them are small andmedium-sized enterprises with little capacity to create jobs.
During the period from 2000 to 2007, agricultural jobs as aproportion of the total dropped from 65 per cent to 52 percent, withmany workers shifting to the industrial and service sectors.
Cheap labour will no longer provide the country a competitiveedge when it shifts from a labour-intensive, export-driven economy to ahigh-tech, capital-intensive one to climb in the global value chain./.