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How to overcome job challenges
In the national employment strategy for the 2011-2020 period, Vietnam needs to make greater efforts to create steady jobs in a sustainable manner.
Over the past two decades, despite its impressive economic growth and progress in poverty reduction, Vietnam has remained unable to ensure stable employment.
From 1990-2009, Vietnam was one of the countries achieving the fastest GDP growth in the world, second only to China. With its annual per capita income growth of 5.5 percent, Vietnam has changed its status from a low-income country to a middle-income developing country.
In 2010, the country’s per capita GDP was estimated at US$1,200 thanks to its remarkable progress in Vietnam’s poverty reduction as well as in other areas of education, health care, electricity, safe water and hygiene.
However, such impressive achievements are still far from meeting the growing demand for high-quality jobs with reasonable incomes, labour safety and social welfare.
The number of employed workers increased from 35.60 million in 1997 to more than 48 million in 2009, while that of unemployed workers rose from 1.05 million to 1.29 million in the corresponding period.
How to ensure stable employment is one of the major challenges for Vietnam as most jobs are generated in informal economic sectors which provide irregular jobs without social welfare. Approximately three quarters of the total jobs are evaluated as “vulnerable” with unstable incomes.
Creating steady jobs for workers will be an important contribution to stimulating economic growth, reducing poverty and maintaining social stability in a sustainable manner.
According to experts, to reach the yearly target of 1.6 million jobs mentioned in the national employment strategy for the 2011-2020 period, Vietnam needs to come up with more effective and synchronous solutions such as increasing the number of skilled workers to 70 percent, and the number of jobs in non-agricultural sectors by 4-5 percent per annum by 2020, and maintaining an annual job growth rate of 2 percent.
Iyanatul Islam from the Employment Policy Department of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva underlines the need for Vietnam to create more jobs with high productivity in the near future by diversifying vocational training and encouraging private businesses to get involved in this field.
Ingrid Fitzgerald, a policy adviser from the UN Office of the Resident Coordinator in Hanoi says Vietnam, as a middle-income country, will receive less aid from foreign donors. Therefore, the Vietnamese Government should devise a plan to cope with the new situation.
Economic growth should go along with efforts to ensure stable employment and social welfare for all people. Vietnam needs to build a model for forecasting the economic development situation in order to adopt suitable policies in connection with employment, Ms Fitzgerald noted.
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