According to a survey by the Hanoi Employment Service Center, in recent years, the city has always exceeded the employment targets (more than 200,000 new jobs per year), maintaining the unemployment rate at a very low level (only 1.02% in 2024). The average income of workers has also continuously increased, reaching nearly 11 million VND/person/month in 2024.
However, the Hanoi labor market also faces deep structural and paradoxical challenges, requiring explosive policy action.
The market is facing the paradox of "Deep-growth and Polarization"
Hanoi's economic growth process is shifting strongly in depth, based on increasing productivity and high technology, instead of only expanding the scale of labor. This is reflected in the low GRDP contraction rate. At the same time, labor will shift rapidly to the service sector (accounting for 61.2% in 2024). This process creates a "skills gap in the midfield": although the number of workers with university degrees or higher has increased sharply (31.97% in 2024), the market is "thirsty" for human resources with practical skills. The demand for technical labor recruitment is increasing, while the proportion of labor through formal vocational training (middle-level, college) is growing slightly (around 6%), leading to the paradox of over-scholarity and shortage of workers.
Challenges from the "gray area" of social security and the calculation of benefits of unemployment insurance policies
Informal workers still account for a large proportion (51.6% in 2024) and are showing a non-deductible trend. The explosion of the Gig economy (temporary, freelance work) pushes hundreds of thousands of workers into the "legal space", excluding them from the forced social security system. The unemployment insurance (UI) policy demonstrates its role as a "support" in paying benefits, but the "main" function of supporting retraining has not been promoted, with the participation rate of less than 1% (796 people receiving vocational training support among 88,120 applications receiving UBTS in 2023).
The "golden society" for conversion is opening from a new legal framework
The Capital Law 2024 (effective in 2025) and the Labor Law 2025 (effective in 2026) create a breakthrough legal corridor for Hanoi to convert unemployment insurance from a weak tool to a chu, expand social security coverage and give the city special mechanisms to support vulnerable groups.
