HCMC – The labor market continued its strong growth momentum of the previous quarter as the employment rate in the year to September soared, the General Statistics Office reported on October 6.
It had around 50.8 million employed workers aged 15 and older in the third quarter, 255 thousand people higher than the figure in the second quarter and soaring 3.5 million over the same period last year.
In January-September, employed people of statutory working age totaled 50.5 million, up 1.5 million over the year-ago period. The period witnessed more and more people leaving their hometowns for cities. The urban labor force in the first nine months reached 18.7 million people, up 1.1 million year-on-year.
The service sector attracted the most workers, with 39% of the workforce, or some 19.7 million workers, going into it, a year-on-year increase of nearly 900,000 workers. The construction and industry sectors came second, accounting for a third of the total with 16.9 million workers, up 726.8 thousand year-on-year.
The rest worked in the agricultural, forestry and fishery sectors, down 162.2 thousand people year-on-year.
The labor force participation rate in the year through September was 68.5%, up 0.9 percentage points compared to the same period last year, while the trained workforce remained unchanged, estimated at 13.5 million people.
On the other hand, nearly 1.08 million people of working age were jobless between January and September, down 251 thousand people over the same period of 2021. The unemployment rate in the nine-month period stood at 2.35%, a decline of 0.64 percentage points versus the same period last year.
The number of unemployed people aged 15 to 24 was estimated at 413 thousand, making up 37.5% of jobless people aged 15 and older.
