Ms. Dang Ngoc Thu Thao - Director of Outsourcing and Labor Leasing Services, Manpower Vietnam Company, said that when the base salary is increased, the group of businesses most clearly affected are those businesses with a large proportion of workers enjoying high salaries, specifically those workers whose income has reached or exceeded the salary ceiling as a basis for paying social insurance.
Ms. Thao said that the increase in the base salary may lead to 3 scenarios in businesses and directly impact the labor market.
Scenario 1: Increased personnel costs will directly impact the personnel structure of the business.
As labor costs increase, many businesses tend to switch to more flexible personnel models such as outsourcing or using human resources according to projects to optimize fixed costs and reduce management burdens.
Businesses can also adjust their talent search strategies. Instead of focusing on recruiting in big cities with high salaries, they will expand to localities with more competitive labor costs, while promoting remote work models to both access quality human resources and better control human resource costs.
Scenario 2: Increased personnel costs may prompt businesses to shift part of their investment from human resources to technology.
Instead of continuously expanding the team, businesses will prioritize applying AI and automation solutions to improve productivity, optimize processes and maintain operational efficiency with more streamlined resources.
The latest survey by Manpower shows that nearly 3/4 of businesses in Vietnam recognize Al tools as an important factor helping their organizations improve labor productivity in the past year, through supporting daily work, automating processes and supporting business strategy development," Ms. Thao said.
Scenario 3: Increased labor costs may prompt some businesses to accelerate the personnel restructuring process.
Manpower Company's Q3/2026 recruitment trend report shows that the percentage of businesses expected to increase recruitment in July-September 2026 is still high, reaching 49%, but has decreased by 14 percentage points compared to Q2/2026. At the same time, the percentage of businesses planning to maintain or narrow down the scale of personnel increased slightly.
This trend is taking place in the context of the official entry into force of the base salary increase regulation, causing labor costs and related expenses to increase for some businesses. Instead of expanding personnel, a part of businesses may prioritize restructuring the team, streamlining operating positions and focusing on improving the efficiency of existing human resources.
Ms. Thao added that these changes reflect 2 major trends of the labor market in the coming time.
First, this is a positive sign for workers and shows that confidence in economic prospects is gradually being strengthened. Raising the base salary helps improve the rights of workers and shows that the market is moving towards recovery, instead of being in a period of sharp cost cuts or declining labor demand.
Second, the labor market will become more and more flexible in both the way businesses use personnel and the way workers choose jobs.
When labor costs and management requirements increase, businesses will not only have one option of recruiting more people. Instead, they can combine many solutions such as outsourcing, project recruitment, remote work, technology application or personnel structure optimization. On the employee side, they also have more choices in terms of working form, business and career path.
