77% of job seekers have a university degree or higher

The Ho Chi Minh City Center for Human Resources Demand Forecasting and Labor Market Information (Falmi) has just released a labor market report for the third quarter of 2023 and a forecast of human resource demand for the fourth quarter of 2023. The report was conducted based on the results of a survey of more than 14,500 businesses with a need to recruit nearly 70,000 jobs and more than 32,300 job seekers.

According to the report, the proportion of job seekers with a university degree or higher is 77% of the total number of job seekers, overwhelming compared to other groups of workers. Specifically, the group of job seekers with a college degree is more than 20%, and the group with a secondary degree is nearly 2%. The group of primary vocational and unskilled workers has an insignificant number of job seekers, each group is less than 1%.

Meanwhile, the recruitment needs based on the professional qualifications of enterprises are quite different. Specifically, enterprises have the highest recruitment needs for workers with intermediate qualifications (over 27%), followed by college qualifications (nearly 25%), and third is university qualifications or higher (nearly 23%).

In terms of structure, the supply and demand of labor with university degrees or higher is seriously imbalanced, with demand accounting for 23% while supply is up to 77%.

Compared to the first 6 months of the year, this gap between supply and demand has been significantly reduced. In the first 6 months of the year, the demand for workers with university degrees or higher from enterprises accounted for nearly 20% of the total demand for human resources; meanwhile, the group of workers seeking jobs with university degrees or higher accounted for more than 84% of the total number of workers registered to seek jobs.

Market reality shows that businesses in Ho Chi Minh City are in need of a large number of skilled workers and the supply is always insufficient compared to the demand. Meanwhile, workers with university degrees or higher are always in surplus, every quarter the number of job seekers is higher than the recruitment needs of businesses.

When the economy is in trouble, the group of workers with university degrees or higher is also the group that is often cut jobs by businesses.

Statistics in 2022 show that the whole city has 146,285 people who lost their jobs and received unemployment benefits. Of which, the group that lost the most jobs was unskilled workers (accounting for 56.62%), followed by workers with university degrees or higher (accounting for 31.14%).

Meanwhile, 2,869 workers with primary vocational certificates lost their jobs (only 1.96%). 6,816 workers with intermediate vocational and professional secondary education (equivalent to 4.66%). 8,218 workers with college or professional education (5.62%).

According to Dr. Doan Nguyen Thuy Trang (HCMC Academy of Officials), the above figures show that the unemployment rate of skilled workers is low. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate of workers with university degrees or higher and unskilled workers is very high.