Employment for Youth: Urgent Tasks

“Employment for Youth” report has just been announced in Hanoi by Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and International Labour Organisation (ILO). This is the result of a survey co-conducted by the Centre for Labour Market Studies of Leicester University, ILO and VCCI. The survey is based on opinions of enterprises’ owners on the quality and skills of new employees recruited from high schools and vocational schools, skills of workers, requirements, and measures to overcome difficulties.

 

According to the Strategy for Vietnamese Youth’s Development till 2010, the biggest task for the youth nowadays is finding a job. Millions of urban young people are unemployed. Young people in rural areas have had a job for less than 75 percent time of the year. Only nearly 15 percent of young labourers get trained and very few are highly skilled. Many young labourers who are well trained and skilled do not have appropriate jobs.

 

According to forecast figures on human resource development, in 2006-2010 period, Vietnam will have another five million people joining the labour market. On the other hand, the social demand for high ranking management officials and highly skilled workers is huge but the supply is of bad quality and insufficient quantity. The severe shortage of highly skilled labour which has not improved much during the last ten years and five years to come will be a big challenge which Vietnam needs to deal with.

 

Currently, in Vietnam and many other developing countries, education and training issues are decided by the State. However, the connection between education and training and demand for labour of enterprises has not been balanced. This connection is of extreme importance to Vietnam, a country whose economy is in the process of industrialization and restructure.

 

Therefore, according to VCCI, Vietnam needs to have dialogues among ministries, sectors and enterprises to make sure that schools and education and training centres provide them with a working force they need. Moreover, these dialogues will help enterprises have appropriate measures to deal with the labour imbalance condition which is sure to happen in a fast changing economy.

 

According to Mr Hoang Van Dung, Vice Standing Chairman of VCCI, the job project for the youth gets built in the frame of national cooperation between Vietnam Government and ILO to develop job with support of Norway Government. The project gets implemented in three years (2006 – 2009).

 

VCCI already sends 5,850 questionnaires, 2,850 of which are sent from Hanoi, and 3,000 of which are sent from Ho Chi Minh City. Enterprises selected for the survey are members of VCCI and some other associations like VYEO, VAFIE and the club of Human Resource Managers. 243 questionnaires are used as data for analysis. The answer rate is 4.3 percent of the total questionnaires sent. This number is enough for analysis though the expected answer rate is 10 percent.

 

Enterprises participating in the survey are those which have operated for many years, half of which have operated for over ten years. Only 12 percent of enterprises have less than three years of operation. About one third of enterprises have less than 100 employees, and one sixth of them have over 1,000 employees. The largest enterprise in the survey has 42,259 employees (the second largest one has over 20,000 employees), and the smallest one has two employees. The average number of labourers of enterprises participating in the survey is 1,044 ones.

 

The study result shows that 3.5 percent of the working force is in the age of 16 and 18, and 39 percent, in the age of 19 and 25. This means that a large part of the Vietnamese working force is the youth. Enterprises with the largest labour scale and smallest labour scale in the survey tend to hire female and young labourers. Compared to the group of largest enterprises, the group of smallest enterprises tends not to hire labourers who are not high school graduators. SOEs hire less female and young labourers than private enterprises do. This difference is even bigger when comparing SOEs with foreign-invested ones.

 

According to Ms Nguyen Huong Tra, specialist of the consultant group of the project, on the survey basis, the consultant group has put forward some proposals to develop job for the youth, including proposal to support vocational training and proposal to improve the labour relationship. Accordingly, the government needs to give support in terms of training expenditure, improve the relationship with enterprises and enterprise owners in order to meet training demands, establish more vocational training centres and provide more training of popular jobs. Especially, it is necessary that the government amend and clarify current laws, policies and regulations on enterprises and labourers are protected, etc. Ms Tra emphasizes the importance of trilateral dialogue.

 

In addition, Ms Tra says that it is vital to resurvey enterprises’ demands after one to two years, job expectation of the youth, and labour supply of vocational training centres. It is also necessary to connect supply and demand, labour training and enterprises, and to have in-depth studies, etc.