On March 22, representatives of the Hanoi Employment Service Center said that it is predicted that in the second quarter of 2026, the picture of the Vietnamese labor market will have a clear polarization. While high-tech and green logistics industries are "eye-red" looking for 150,000 high-quality personnel, in the opposite direction, the wave of cutting general labor and administrative personnel has not shown signs of stopping.
The Hanoi Employment Service Center summarized forecasts from human resource suppliers showing that the national recruitment demand in the second quarter of 2026 is expected to increase by 12-15% compared to the first quarter of 2026. However, 70% of the new recruitment demand is completely concentrated in the group of skilled workers with international certificates.
Leading the "personnel thirst" list is the semiconductor and chip industry. It is forecasted that in the next 3 months, this segment alone needs to add about 15,000 operating engineers and technicians to meet new production lines going into operation in high-tech zones. The green logistics industry under pressure to switch to electric transportation and smart warehouses to achieve export certification to Europe is causing recruitment demand to increase sharply by 20%.
Although overall recruitment demand is increasing, the market is witnessing a paradox that about 5-7% of workers in administrative, data entry and switchboard positions are facing the risk of being eliminated right in April 2026. The direct cause comes from businesses simultaneously deploying domestic AI solutions to optimize the apparatus.
In the second quarter of 2026, businesses are willing to pay a salary one and a half times higher to get a person to work immediately, instead of recruiting a large number of unskilled workers and then having to spend money on retraining from the beginning. This shift will lead to a wave of "job hopping" in the service and food and beverage services. It is expected that about 18% of workers in these fields will leave their current positions," a representative of the Hanoi Employment Service Center said.
