Over 1.3 million Vietnamese will be out of work in 2022, a rise of 100,000 people from the previous year.

Employment opportunities for Vietnamese laborers have become slimmer than ever. Photo: Nguyen Viet Thanh/ILO

This is forecast by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in its latest report titled “World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2022.”

The 2023 projection in Vietnam is about 1.2 million people, equal to that of 2021, the year Covid-19 occurred, the report said.

Meanwhile, Trading Economics noted the Vietnam unemployment rate is projected to trend around 3.3% in 2022 and 2.9% in 2023. The rate increased to 3.72% in the third quarter of 2021 from 2.62% in the second quarter of 2021.

In 2021, Vietnam’s labor market faced more obstacles and difficulties compared to 2020 due to the prolonged Covid-19 outbreak. More than 1.4 million people of working age became jobless during the year, representing an inter-annual rise by more than 200,000 people.

The unemployment rate in 2021 was higher than the previous year, of which this proportion in the urban areas exceeded 4%, according to the General Statistics Office.

The affected laborers were mainly those in the countryside, especially in the field of service. The number of employed people in the working-age group in 2021 reached over 1.4 million, increasing by 203,700 on year.

In 2021, the unemployment rate among the working-age people was 3.2%, an increase of 0.54% over the previous year. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate of the youth aged between 15 and 24 was nearly 8.5%, surging 0.5% over 2020.

The ILO’s report warns of a slow and uncertain recovery, as the pandemic continues to impact global labor markets for years to come.

Global unemployment is expected to remain above pre-Covid-19 levels until at least 2023. The 2022 level is estimated at 207 million, compared to 186 million in 2019. The ILO’s report also cautions that the overall impact on employment is significantly greater than the one represented in these figures because many people have left the labor force. In 2022, the global labor force participation rate is projected to remain 1.2 percentage points below that of 2019.

The downgrade in the 2022 forecast reflects, to some extent, the impact that recent variants of the pandemic such as Delta and Omicron, according to the ILO.

The report warns of the stark differences in the impact the crisis is having across groups of workers and countries. These differences are deepening inequalities within and among countries and weakening the economic, financial and social fabric of almost every nation, regardless of development status. This damage is likely to require years to repair, with potential long-term consequences for labor force participation, household incomes and social and – possibly – political cohesion.

According to the organization, the effects are being felt in labor markets in all regions of the world, although a great divergence in recovery patterns can be observed. The European and the North American regions are showing the most encouraging signs of recovery, while Southeast Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean have the most negative outlook.

“At the national level, labor market recovery is strongest in high-income countries, while lower-middle-income economies are faring worst,” the report noted.

Guy Ryder, ILO Director General said: “There can be no real recovery from this pandemic without a broad-based labor market recovery. And to be sustainable, this recovery must be based on the principles of decent work-including health and safety, equity, social protection and social dialogue.”