Labour market picks up in 2023: Minister

Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Đào Ngọc Dung made his speech at the meeting on Tuesday. — VNA/VNS Photo Hoàng Hiếu

HÀ NỘI — The labour market is bouncing back with more people getting employed in 2023 than in the previous year.

That was the remark made by Đào Ngọc Dung, Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, at the ministerial virtual meeting on labour on Monday.

He said the workforce in many industrial zones and key economic sites was stable in 2023, as the mass layoffs that had ravaged the country since Q4/2022 had lost steam in the last months of the year. 

Measures had been taken to help more people get jobs overseas. In 2023, over 150,000 workers were employed abroad, up nearly 9 per cent year-on-year.

The rise in employment had led to higher participation rates in social insurance (39.3 per cent) and unemployment insurance (31.6 per cent), surpassing the targets set earlier this year. 

By the end of November, over one million people had filed for unemployment benefits, of which about 955,000 claims were approved, up 9.5 per cent compared to the same period in 2022.

The ministry also did quite well in terms of social support, with around VNĐ29 trillion (US$1.2 billion) being granted to over 1.1 million beneficiaries.

Social assistance had also been well spent on 3.3 million vulnerable individuals and over 354,000 households monthly.

The National Fund for Vietnamese Children had raised VNĐ110 billion ($4.5 million) to offer direct support to 68,000 children and indirect support to 57,500.

The minister said that despite 2023 being a year marked by difficulties and obstacles, the ministry had overcome them to reach its targets. The ministry will delve into the issues it had not solved in 2023 to gain better results in 2024. 

At the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Trần Hồng Hà urged the ministry to improve the legal framework on labour to keep it in line with the standards set by the International Labour Organisation and new-generation free trade agreements.

He also assigned the ministry the task of drafting a national strategy to deal with the problems of population ageing and gender imbalance.

The Deputy PM also said he will attend the inauguration of the National Jobs Platform, to take place in Q1/2024. With the platform, the ministry will take the lead in terms of digital transformation in the country.  

Regarding people with merits in the revolution, he called for measures to ensure they would be at the top of the social benefit hierarchy. He also called for measures to help disadvantaged groups, including ethnic minorities and people in poverty, to access social services with ease. 

“It is essential to ensure social welfare is readily accessible to beneficiaries,” said Hà. 

Minister Dung said the ministry would spare no efforts in 2024 to meet the three targets set by the National Assembly, namely an unemployment rate of less than 4 per cent, trained workers reaching 69 per cent of the workforce, and a multidimensional poverty rate kept down around 1 per cent.  — VNS