VietNamNet Bridge – As predicted, the unemployment rate in Vietnam has increased rapidly in the economic recession, when there are more dissolved than newly set up businesses.

The latest report by the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) showed that 1.053 million people aged from 15 were found jobless in 2013. Of these, the people aged 15-24 accounted for 48 percent of the total unemployed people, or 480,000.

The high percentage of unemployed young people has been explained by their lack of experiences and weak skills.

The noteworthy thing is that the number of unemployed university graduates aged 21-29 has reached 101,000.

A recent survey found that a housemaid was paid VND2.8 million a month in 2012, which was 30 percent higher than the pay for new university graduates (VND2 million).

It is estimated that 52.4 million people, aged 15 or higher, worked in economic sectors in 2013, an increase of 1.36 percent over 2012. Of these, 34.2 percent of workers were listed as informal workers, including 47.4 percent in urban areas and 28.6 percent in rural areas.

The proportions were 33.7 percent, 46.8 percent and 28 percent, respectively, in 2012.

Analysts have commented that the unemployment panorama in Vietnam is reflected in three indexes – the number of jobless people, the number of people lacking job and the number of official workers.

The jobless proportion of working-aged people in 2013 was estimated at 2.2 percent (3.58 percent in urban areas and 1.58 percent in rural areas).

Meanwhile, the proportion of people lacking jobs was estimated at 2.77 percent (1.48 percent in urban areas and 3.35 percent in rural areas). All the indexes are higher than that in 2012.

The biggest reason behind the unemployment rate increase is the high number of businesses which have got dissolved or bankrupt. A report showed that 60,737 businesses stopped their operation in 2013, up by 11.9 percent over 2012. The health of businesses and the national economy has been truly reflected in the “thermometer” – the unemployment rate.

It is expected that the Vietnamese labor force would increase by 864.300 to 53.65 million in 2014, including 47.49 million workers in the working age.

Analysts have commented that the year 2014 with foreseen big difficulties would make the plan of creating 1.6 million jobs very challenging for the government.

In 2013, government agencies and economists once argued about the accuracy of statistics. The economists said they could not understand why the employment rate was still high despite the economic downturn and the bankruptcy of tens of thousands of businesses.

In late November, in the 2013 macroeconomic report released by the National Assembly’s Economics Committee, Nguyen Thang, an expert from the Academy of Social Sciences, also pointed out that a lot of problems have been found in statistics.

According to Thang, the unemployment rate statistics seemingly do not have much significance in Vietnam, the economy in which unofficial sectors and agriculture provide ¾ of total jobs.

Thang said once a worker in the official sector loses job, he would try to find another job in the agriculture sector or informal sector to earn money to feed himself and his family. Therefore, the statistics cannot reflect the real situation of the labor market.

This explains why the unemployment rate in Vietnam is still low in the last two years, despite the increasingly high number of bankrupt businesses.

Compiled by C. V