The majority of this economic growth has come about due to the movement of people from traditional agriculture to the manufacturing and services industries, in addition to the increased mechanization of the agriculture sector itself.
The nation represents one of ASEAN’s largest labor markets with 56 million people and a participation rate of 76%. Due to the developing nature of the workforce in the country, it is natural that there exists some difficulties in finding highly-skilled employees, with only 12% of the Vietnamese workforce being considered highly skilled.
According to the article, skills and talent shortages are particularly acute in industries such as technology and banking, with the country currently lacking over 70,000 IT workers per year, leading the Government to set a target of creating a pool of 1.3 million IT workers by 2025.
The article outlined that the trade war between the United States and China has aggravated the existing shortage of quality labor as more companies shift all or part of their manufacturing to the Vietnamese market, particularly for engineers, managers, and software developers.
As a means of addressing the challenges within its labor force, the Vietnamese Government has announced it will prioritize adapting its industries for a digital future and will improve the accessibility of on-the-job training programs in these fields.
The vocational education system is also increasing its commitment to work with the private sector as it seeks to establish more enterprise-based training schemes. The local business climate already encourages innovation and aims to attract greater foreign investment, with an enhanced learning ecosystem allowing the country to competently respond to any new technological disruptions.
