Revealing a large gap in labor supply and demand in Can Tho

According to the Can Tho City Employment Service Center, data collected from 85 businesses, with 5,593 vacant job positions needing to be recruited and the job search demand of 6,929 workers, shows a large gap between supply and demand in job groups in August 2026.

Notably, the occupational group with a large labor supply-demand gap is Agriculture - Forestry - Fisheries. The reason stems from the mismatch between economic orientation and the specific characteristics of the labor force when the city promotes urbanization and applies mechanization and high technology to agricultural production. The area of agricultural land is narrowed and the demand for manual labor is sharply reduced.

Although modern agricultural production enterprises still need personnel, it is mainly engineers and highly qualified experts. However, the labor supply in the market is overwhelmed by the number of unskilled and freelance workers.

In addition, the fact that small-scale farms and production facilities often directly hire seasonal contracts instead of officially registering for recruitment has caused the actual demand on job exchanges to always be low. From there, leading to a surplus supply situation in the reported data.

In addition, comparative data between total labor supply and total labor demand in August in Can Tho City also shows that there is a situation of supply exceeding demand in some occupational groups. Specifically, occupational groups with quite large demand exceeding supply are food processers, woodworking, garment, handicrafts, other related workers and simple labor occupational groups.

The imbalance between labor supply and demand largely comes from businesses in the city with medium and small scale, limited recruitment capacity and focusing more on direct technical labor or skilled workers.

In particular, the disparity between actual qualifications and the skills businesses need, along with the gap between the income expectations of workers and the actual remuneration level, has led to a surplus of surface recruitment supply while the market still lacks high-quality human resources.

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