TopCV conducted the survey from August to September 2024, with over 1,500 business owners and over 1,500 employees in all industries, thereby creating a fairly general picture of the recruitment market in Vietnam in 2024 and trends in 2025.
Labor market stable but under pressure to cut
32.2% of workers in the Non-IT group (non-software occupations) are maintaining stable jobs and have no need to change. This rate in the IT - Software group is 35.66%.
This suggests that a relatively small portion of the workforce is not affected by economic changes or restructuring. Or this is a cautious group of workers who are not willing to change jobs during a period that is considered to be highly volatile. This is a group of candidates who will not enter the recruitment market in the short term.
The total number of employees who voluntarily quit and were subject to layoffs in the Non-IT group was 53.3% and 51.34% in the IT - Software group (It is worth noting that the layoff rate in this group was up to 24.14%, higher than the average of 7.6%).
This is a figure showing the challenging reality of the IT - Software job market, although it is considered one of the industries with hot growth in the past 3 years.
Changing jobs is no longer a sure way to increase income.
In 2024, the general market situation is that there is no increase in income when changing jobs. This figure is 26.13% in the Non-IT group (non-software industry group) and 27.59% for the IT - Software group.
The number of workers who are able to increase their total income by 3 - 5% when changing jobs is only about 10.3% in the Non-IT group and 9.2% in the IT - Software group. The higher increases are all below 7.54%.
This trend shows that changing jobs no longer guarantees the ability to increase salary as before (especially during the period of booming demand for IT - Software personnel).
In fact, in the current context, many workers are willing to take a pay cut when changing jobs. This can be explained by the barriers analyzed earlier, especially when the supply of candidates in the market is relatively large, leading to great competition for ideal job positions.
In addition, the saturation of job opportunities in some technology fields, or economic pressures, will also make companies more cautious in allocating salary budgets.
Business and sales will be thirsty for human resources in 2025
According to the survey results, the Business/Sales group is the top priority in the recruitment needs of businesses.
However, 21.6% of business representatives said that this group will also be the first group in the human resource optimization plan when necessary. The main reason comes from changing market demand, affecting product or service groups, leading to a reduction in human resource needs (accounting for 52.34%).
In addition to the Business/Sales group, some other industry groups are also in the optimal priority range such as Marketing/Communication/Advertising (9%) and Customer Service (7.5%), as these positions can restructure the scope of work towards multitasking.
The IT - Software group (5.7%) often has personnel adjustments when the market changes its technology needs.
