In the morning April 16th, 2021, the General Statistics Office of Viet Nam (GSO) held a press conference to announce the report on labour and employment of the first quarter of 2021. Mr. Pham Quang Vinh – Deputy Director General of GSO chaired the press conference. Delegates attending this event were Ms. Valentina Barcucci – Labor economist of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Country Office in Viet Nam; representatives of ministries and agencies; departments of GSO and press agencies in Hanoi. The press conference was connected online at the bridge points of some Province Statistics Office. Mr. Tite Habiyakare, Labor Statistics Specialist, ILO Asia-Pacific Regional Office, participates online in Bangkok – Thailand.
At the conference, the GSO announced the application collection and calculation of labour and employment indicators using the new conceptual framework based on the recommendations of the International Labour Organization (ILO). the new conceptual framework agreed by the member states at the 19th International Conference on Labour Statistics (ICLS 19) held in October 2013 in Geneva, Switzerland, is commonly referred to as the ICLS 19 standard, promulgated to replace the ICLS 13, 1982. Under the new ICLS 19 standard, those who work for the purpose of making subsistence products in the agriculture, forestry and fishery sector will not be identified as employed as previously defined by the ICLS 13. From 2015 to 2017, the GSO pilot tested the new standards. Then, in 2019 and 2020, they collected data according to the new standards and the old standards at the same time. And as from the first quarter of 2021, the General Statistics Office will officially publish the labour and employment indicators based on ICLS 19 standard. Furthermore, to allow for the full assessment of the fluctuations of the labour market over time, the General Statistics Office will concurrently calculate and re-publish the labour and employment indicators using the ICLS 19 standard for all the quarters of 2019 until present as a basis for comparison.
Speaking at the Press Conference, Ms. Valentina Barcucci congratulated the GSO for recognition of the quality of the labor and employment statistics when calculating according to the new Conceptual Framework. The adoption of the new standards is credible and data from Viet Nam is now internationally comparable.
Also at the press conference, the GSO announced the statistics on labour and employment of the first quarter of 2021 and the report on the impacts of the Covid-19 epidemic on labour and employment situation in Viet Nam. Besides, information on workers engaged in subsistence employment in the agriculture, forestry and fishery sector is also recorded and made publicly available in this report.
According to the report, the Covid-19 pandemic in some provinces just days before the Lunar New Year this year has negatively affected the labour and employment situation of the whole country and slowed down the momentum of job recovery and improvement in workers’ wages in the first quarter of 2021. Despite the strong efforts in the economic recovery coupled with pandemic prevention and response which have resulted in the improvement of the grey gloom of the labour and employment situation in the country, in the first quarter of 2021 still 9.1 million people aged 15 and over across the country were negatively affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, 51% of whom are male and nearly two-thirds were between the ages of 25 and 54.
The labour force aged 15 and over in the first quarter of 2021 was 51 million people, down 1.1 million from the previous quarter and 180.9 thousand people from the same period last year; the number of employed people aged 15 and over was 49.9 million, down 959.6 thousand from the previous quarter and 177.8 thousand people from the same period last year. The decrease was mainly in rural areas and among men (with the respective decrease of 491.5 thousand people and 713.4 thousand men compared to the same period last year).
The underemployment rate of statutory working-age persons in the first quarter of 2021 was 2.2% (increase by 0.38 percentage points against the previous quarter and 0.22 percentage points over the same period last year). The underemployment rate of statutory working-age workers in the first quarter of 2021 in the agriculture, forestry and fishery sector was 3.88% (decreased by 0.8 percentage points over the same period last year), the industry and construction sector 1.51% (increased by 0.86 percentage points), the service sector 1.76% (increased by 0.31 percentage points).
The unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2021 was 2.42%, down 0.21 percentage points from the previous quarter and up 0.08 percentage points against the same period last year. The average monthly wages among employees/salaried workers in the first quarter of 2021 reached 7.2 million VND, an increase of 556 thousand VND against the previous quarter and 132 thousand VND over the same period last year. Male workers earned on average 1.2 times higher than female workers (with 7.6 million VND versus 6.6 million VND).
In the whole economy, there are still 3.5 million workers engaged in subsistence work in the agriculture, forestry and fishery sector (of which women make up nearly two-thirds of this group), accounting for about 4.7% of people aged 15 and over, an increase of 113 thousand people compared to the previous quarter and an increase of 84.7 thousand people over the same period last year.
In concluding remarks, the statistical indicators on the labour and employment situation in the first quarter of 2021 have uncovered the difficulties and fluctuations of the economy in general and the Vietnamese labour market in particular in recent years. These difficulties represent a huge challenge to the Government’s efforts to achieve the dual goal: economic development and victory over the pandemic. Against this backdrop, the General Statistics Office would like to propose a number of solutions to address difficulties for the labour market in the context of an unpredictable pandemic. These include:
– Actively research and immediately implement the issuance of vaccine passports, develop the necessary criteria to open the international tourism market to help the service sector in general and the tourism industry in particular not miss the opportunity to recover and develop. The development of these industries will attract a large number of workers, thus contributing to more effectively utilizing the available potential of the labour force.
– Currently, Viet Nam still has 3.5 million workers engaged in producing agricultural products for the main purpose of their own use and that of their families. About 93.5% of subsistence workers do not have any professional or technical qualifications and more than half of them are of working age. This is an extremely rich source of potential that can be utilized for development. Therefore, the State should implement specific policies to attract these subjects to participate in the labour market, contributing to improving social labour productivity in general on the on hand and helping to improve workers’ lives, on the other.
At the press conference, representatives of the GSO answered questions from reporters about labour and employment issues under the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic and forcasted about labour and employment situation in the quarters of the year 2021.