VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam is among the nations with the lowest unemployment rates on the globe, but the number of young jobless laborers is triple the domestic unemployment rate.

Vietnam has the lowest unemployment rate

The International Labor Organization (ILO) on January 21 released a report showing the slight increase in the unemployment rate in Vietnam and the higher percentage of vulnerable jobs.

ILO’s Guy Ryder said the surveys have found the satisfactory job prospect in Vietnam. The survey conducted in the fourth quarter of 2013 by the General Statistics Office and ILO found that the number of jobs increased by 862,000, or 1.7 percent in comparison with the same period of the year before.

The highest job growth rates were seen in the foreign invested sector (4.8 percent) over 2012. The majority of jobs were created in the service, industry and construction sectors.

Vietnamese labor cost is equal to 1/3 of Chinese

One of the reasons that made Samsung Electronics to move its factories from China to Vietnam in mid-December 2013 was the cheap labor cost in Vietnam, which was just equal to 1/3 of that in China.

A survey by the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) in 2012 showed that a worker in Beijing, China received $466, while a worker in Hanoi got $145 a month.

Lee Jung Soon from the South Korean Trade and Investment Promotion Chamber said he can see the growing tendency of foreign investors relocating their factories to Vietnam in the next 2-3 years.

Working conditions bad

However, Vietnamese workers at Samsung’s and Nokia’s factories now have to work in unsafe conditions.

In fact, the working environment at the factories still can meet the requirements stipulated in VSCP, the national standards. However, the standards are believed to be out of dated which have not been updated for the last 20 years, while resonant impacts of the environmental factors on workers’ health have not been considered.

Working in unsafe environments, a lot of Vietnamese workers have been found as being infected with the diseases such as occupational deafness, eye pain, cancer, miscarriage, and stillbirth.

A worker, who is in charge of testing telephones, complained that he has to test 76 products a day and he suffers the tinnitus during his working shift.

Another worker complained she usually feels the eyestrain after eight months of working at the factory, though her eyesight was very strong when she had health examined before going to work.

Young workers stay jobless, civil servants plentiful

The ILO’s report showed that the unemployment rate among young laborers was triple that of the domestic unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2013, at 5.95 percent.

The economic recession has led to the high unemployment rate. Official reports showed that 60,737 businesses got dissolved in 2013, an increase of 11.9 percent over 2012.

Though the number of newly set up businesses was higher than the number of dissolved businesses, there are not many businesses which can create many jobs.

While the number of young laborers who cannot find jobs has been on the rise, the state has to pay a high number of civil servants, reportedly reached 280,000 by early 2014.

Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc commented that 30 percent of the civil servants are unnecessary for state agencies.

Dat Viet