Việt Nam’s economy was expected to add more than 150,000 new jobs in the first quarter of 2018, continuing last year’s positive streak of job generation. — Photo vtv.vn

HÀ NỘI — Việt Nam’s economy was expected to add more than 150,000 new jobs in the first quarter of 2018, continuing last year’s positive streak of job generation.

The total number of employed workers could reach 54.2 million people, partly driven by the long economic expansion as the GDP growth in the first three months this year was likely to reach 6.3 per cent, said the Institute of Labour Science and Social Affairs (ILSSA) head Đào Quang Vinh during a meeting on the labour market last week.

Such new job gain, however, will be only half of what was created in the last quarter of 2017, when about 282,200 people secured a job.

Graduate unemployment

According to an ILSSA report on the labour market in the fourth quarter of 2017, there were 1.07 million people unemployed, of which 20 per cent, or 215,300, were university graduates.

Though the unemployment rate among university graduates decreased sharply compared to the previous quarter, it remains a heavy pressure on the Government to generate more jobs and at the same time, to lift the university education quality to meet the market demand.

Workers who went to vocational training schools, on the other hand, found it easiest to secure a job among those with post-high school education. The number of unemployed vocational graduates stayed at 64,600 in the last quarter of 2017, plummeting by 30,900 over the previous quarter – the largest margin compared to labourers from other educational backgrounds.

Better wages

The report also pointed out an increase in monthly wages in every sector, though such gains were not adequate to the economic growth, Vinh said.

Employees with university degrees were the ones receiving the highest average salary, at about VNĐ7.74 million (US$344) a month.

Those from vocational schools had the lowest monthly wage, at VNĐ5.7 million on average.

Regarding the rate of wage increase, unskilled employees benefited the most with an extra VNĐ351,000, or about 5.8 per cent, added to their salary over the previous quarter.

“The wages in general increased compared to the third quarter of 2017 and the same period in 2016. But the rate was still slow considering the fast GDP growth and other factors,” Vinh said.

“That might reflect the gap between reality and policy adjustments. I hope that such adjustments will see more clear results in the first quarter of 2018.” — VNS