HCM City in the remaining months of this year needs more than 150,000, according to the municipal Centre for Forecasting Manpower and Labour Market Information.

Workers lack job security, safety net

University and college graduates make up 20 per cent of the demand, said Tran Anh Tuan, deputy head of the centre that is under the city Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs.

The number of workers from vocational schools will account for 40 per cent, while manual labourers will make up the remaining 40 per cent, he added

The area seeking to employ the most in the rest of 2010 will be economic management, business, restaurants, electronics, chemistry, cooking, construction, accounting, auditing, textiles and communications, he said.

The city will need more than 20,000 additional labourers for seasonal jobs before the year ends, he said. According to Tuan, companies and enterprises shouldn’t be worried by the current shortage, because thousands of students are about to graduate from universities, colleges and vocational schools.

In this year’s first six months, there were 130,000 out of a total 185,000 jobseekers who found jobs in the city, he said.

City labour shortages in the first six months were because workers from other provinces stayed there to find jobs, as city salaries hadn’t kept up with the rising cost of living, Tuan said.

The current average salary that enterprises and companies offer manual labourers was still under VND2 million per month (US$105), despite some small increases, he said, adding it should be raised to as much as VND3 million.

Source: VNS