Forecast for the period 2025 - 2030, Ho Chi Minh City will need 1 million new workers

The city's labor force is lacking

The situation of "excess" unskilled labor and a shortage of high-quality labor can determine the story of many job seekers. Mr. Nguyen Minh Tri (residing in Tan Binh ward) has struggled for two months to find a job as a sales staff but has not yet found a suitable place, having to depend on career support money. "The reason I still haven't found a job is because my salary level is not suitable, so I still try to find better opportunities" - Mr. Tri explained.

According to data from the City Employment Service Center in just the first 10 months of 2025, the whole city recorded more than 140,000 job seekers and over 250,000 recruitment positions, a significant increase compared to the same period in 2024 (116,899 job seekers and over 190,087 recruitment positions).

Speaking at the "Connecting human resources with employers" - Job Link 2025 program on November 9, Ms. Luong Thi Toi - Deputy Director of the Department of Home Affairs of Ho Chi Minh City - commented that 2025 is a historic step. Ho Chi Minh City will merge with Binh Duong and Ba Ria - Vung Tau from July 1, 2025, forming a super urban area with nearly 14 million people, playing the role of leading economic center of Southeast Asia.

With that orientation, the work trend will focus on the fields of AI, data; automation; renewable energy, logistics and financial management... This will be a great formula for labor resources in the occupations of Labor Harm that focus on many unskilled workers who have not been recognized for their profession during the training process.

It is forecasted that in the period of 2025 - 2030, Ho Chi Minh City will need from 800,000 to over 1 million new workers, of which 70% will be in the specialized service group - high-tech industry. The Ho Chi Minh City labor market is facing the problem of adequate and lacking labor energy. Accordingly, there is an excess of unskilled labor, a shortage of labor with high technical expertise. This is a long-standing problem that requires solutions to promote human resource development.

The industrial sector is also "different" from information technology

Dr. Pham Anh Thang - Deputy Chief of the Office of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Chief Representative of the Home Affairs Agency in Ho Chi Minh City - said that the preliminary assessment on the quality of human resources not only exists in the private sector but also in the industrial sector.

According to Dr. Pham Anh Thang, previously, Vietnam had the old national governance context, but from July 1, 2025, our country has operated a 2-level local government management model, with a total of 3-level management. This is very effective in solving work problems.

Although the rate of workers with certificates is increasing steadily (reaching 29.3% in the third quarter of 2025), our country is facing a sharp decline in the number of people participating in annual labor (a decrease from 1.1 million people to 500,000 people in the third quarter of 2025).

Dr. Thang warned: "If we are not careful, we can easily face the adversity of not being rich, old, not being dangerous, and retired".

In particular, after operating the new government model and implementing digital transformation, the public sector is seriously lacking in qualified personnel, especially masters in Information Technology (IT). He emphasized that we must take the lead to ensure effective management.

To solve this problem, Dr. Thang proposed a core solution that businesses must directly participate in training, linking and placing orders for training institutions in the right industry they need.

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