According to the Hanoi Employment Service Center, in May 2026, the labor market continues to focus human resources on the service and industry - construction sectors. May is the peak season for summer tourism and services, businesses in central districts are promoting the recruitment of service workers. At the same time, industrial parks and export processing zones in the city still maintain a large demand for human resources for production to keep up with the order progress in the second quarter. In May 2026, the total recruitment demand of businesses in the city reached 57,000 positions.
Hanoi Employment Service Center compiled information on 18,380 recruitment targets of 1,290 vacant job information at the Center showing that recruitment demand is concentrated in industry groups such as: Wholesale, retail and other service activities accounting for 56.6% (up 5.4 percentage points compared to April 2026); processing and manufacturing - construction industry accounting for 27.5% (down 3.3 percentage points compared to April 2026); tourism and travel services accounting for 4%.
In May 2026, businesses continue to focus on hunting for skilled workers with high professional qualifications, led by the group of intermediate and senior professionals and office assistants. The direct labor force at the production line has moderate recruitment demand. General and frontline jobs have a fairly good recruitment force, mainly to compensate for the constant fluctuation of personnel.
This indicates that the Hanoi labor market is falling into a situation of oversupply of unskilled labor/machine operation but shortage of highly qualified professional labor that meets business standards. High-quality personnel in the professional and technical sectors will have a great negotiating advantage in this period," said a representative of the Hanoi Employment Service Center.
The Hanoi Employment Service Center believes that the recruitment demand of businesses in May 2026 is forming a "banana-shaped structure": demand is soaring in the peak segment (experts, specialized engineers) and the bottom segment (common labor, skilled workers), while narrowing in the ordinary office workers segment. On the one hand, businesses are focusing on recruiting personnel with college and university degrees (accounting for about 50%) to form a professional management framework. On the other hand, many businesses maintain a wave of recruiting common labor and technical workers to operate direct daily tasks.
Notably, the real estate industry is also experiencing a boom in demand with a "3 no" recruitment strategy: no experience, no qualifications, no mandatory sales staff experience. Regarding salary levels, in addition to the main salary range of 10-20 million VND/month, the market witnessed a breakthrough of the technical - construction block due to fierce personnel competition: Engineers reach 30-55 million VND/month, workers 22-29 million VND/month, mechanics 16-65 million VND/month.
Regarding salary levels, the main segment is from 10-20 million VND/month (accounting for 52.3%); followed by salaries from 5-10 million VND/month (accounting for 42.6%) and salaries over 20 million VND/month (accounting for 4.5%).
In the context of the living cost level in the Capital tending to increase, the current salary below 10 million VND/month is very difficult to retain workers. The fact that over 50% of recruitment positions are in the range of 10-20 million VND/month shows that businesses have proactively raised the income floor to attract talent and in line with the price level in the Capital," said Mr. Vu Quang Thanh - Deputy Director of Hanoi Employment Service Center.
