The growing demand for labor from Hanoi companies showed a recovery in production and business after long being affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to local insiders.

Jobseekers and employers attend the job fair of Long Bien District. Photo: Tran Oanh

The mobile job fairs in 2022, organized by the Hanoi Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs in collaboration with the People’s Committees of Dong Anh, Me Linh, Ba Vi, Gia Lam, Long Bien, Hoan Kiem districts, have largely attracted the participation of local employers who came with many job offers.

Dinh Thi Thu Huong, Vice Chairwoman of the Gia Lam district People's Committee, told The Hanoi Times that the offer of nearly 9,000 jobs from 90 businesses in a recent job fair in the district is twice as much as the number in 2020, focusing on unskilled workers in the industries of textile and garment and electronic assembly.

The businesses joining the job fair included Vietnam Airlines Corporation, which has more than 800 vacancies, and TP Bank, which needs bank tellers and consultants.

Several companies required no experience from job seekers and were willing to spend the initial training costs as they rush to complete their business plan for the second half of the year.

According to a representative of a garment manufacturing company in Hanoi, the company announced 300 vacancies for technical and worker positions to make up for labor shortages due to the impact of the pandemic and ensure the completion of the company's year-end orders.

According to the latest report from the Hanoi Labor, Invalid, and Social Affairs Department, in the first six months of 2022, the city helped nearly 119,000 workers find jobs, of whom 1,201 workers were sent to work abroad under fixed-term contracts and nearly 7,832 people were hired through the job exchange system.

In the last months of 2022, the city will continue to implement solutions to energize the labor market, including reducing the time to handle administrative procedures, holding vocational training and finding jobs for unemployed people, deploying policies to provide loans for job creation, labor export, production development, restoration and development of traditional handicraft industries.

The Hanoi Department of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs has improved the operational capacity of employment services to provide market information for employers and job seekers.

Policies to support employees will be enhanced in Hanoi, together with improving labor market forecasting, speeding up the loan approval process, collecting market information, and connecting labor supply and demand in parallel with ensuring the prevention of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The department has proposed to the Hanoi authorities to provide loans through the funds entrusted to the Social Policy Bank branch to business households and employees facing difficulties due to the Covid-19 pandemic so that they could restore production and business activities.

They will also effectively implement the project on improving the operational efficiency of the city’s job exchanges in the 2021-2025 period and the following years.

This year, the Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs forecast that Vietnam would face a shortage of nearly 1.3 million workers, an increase of nearly 20% compared to 2021. The labor shortage is expected to be even more severe during this time of economic recovery.