Most of Viet Nam's workers remain vulnerable to the loss of their jobs or lack acceptable work.

The Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Ministry (MoLISA)'s first employment trends report shows that only 23 per cent of the total workforce are wage- and salary-earners.

The remainder are self-employed or working for small family farms and enterprises.

It means that two-thirds of the total workforce are unpaid family and own-account workers who are likely to lack elements associated with decent employment, while 64 per cent of female workers lack decent jobs.

Viet Nam is still very much a rural country and argriculture remains the most important economic sector with more than 52 per cent of total employment, says the report that is based on key labour market indicators from 1997 to 2007 and was issued late last month.

This was true even though the proportion of total agricultural employment fell by about 13 per cent between 1997 and 2007, it says.

Another ministry report, which studied labour supply and demand, confirmed the imbalance.

Own-account and family-employed workers had little chance to find stable work, said the ministry's Employment Department deputy director Nguyen Hai Van.

"The majority of Viet Nam's workforce is vulnerable according to international standards," she said.

"Countries with a high number of vulnerable workers have high rates of hunger and poverty."

Although numerous workers have shifted from rural to urban Viet Nam in the past ten years, their migration has not done much to increase the number of wage earners.

The number of urban workers has increased 3.8 per cent in the last decade, but the number of self-employed or those who work for small family farms and enterprises increased by 2.9 per cent.

"This is a very ‘extraordinary' phenomenon that really needs to be pondered and more thoroughly studied," said the deputy director.

Failing safety net

The number of people working in industrial parks, processing zones and private businesses has also increased during the past decade, but they too face difficulties, warns National Assembly's Social Affairs Committee Chairman Nguyen Van Tien.

"They are mostly migrant workers who lack basic accommodation because of poor pay," he told a conference to discuss migrant labour, organised by the Centre for Co-operation on Human Resource Development (C&D), earlier this month.

The national fund, which provides more than VND3.4 trillion (over US$187 million), was still providing finance for non-official work creation and this created between 250,000 and 300,000 jobs each year.

But the people working in unofficial jobs were not protected by social security policies, said Institution for Labour and Social Affairs Sciences director Nguyen Lan Huong.

"For a long-term strategy, to ensure social security, it is necessary to increase the number of productive workers (wage-earners) over manual labourers," she said.

"Labour market information and analysis is an important tool to monitor supply and demand of the labour market, investigate excess supply and excess demand," explained United Nations Viet Nam co-ordinator John Hendra.

"It enables policy makers to develop policies that help people find and secure decent jobs."

The Viet Nam Employment Trends report – prepared with the technical support from the International Labour Organisation – suggests encouraging Viet Nam's effort to develop its human resources and labour market as a way to mitigate the problem.

But these policies should be applied in different ways to the past when people undertook training courses before unguided participation in the labour market. "Employment and labour market policies that promote opportunities for women and men, and particularly young people, to obtain decent work must be supported by timely and accurate data," said Rie Vejs-Kjeldgaard, ILO, Viet Nam, director.

The report, the first based primarily on MoLISA's labour force surveys, was expected to have a major influence on the country's labour market management policies, he said.

Viet Nam was moving toward the status of a middle-income country and the effective and proper implementation of labour market policies would help the country fulfil its targets.