Firms in HCM city to need 50,000 workers by year-end

Enterprises in Vietnam’s southern metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City will need to recruit 50,000 workers to fulfill their production targets from now to the Lunar New Year 2011, said the municipal Center of Forecasting Manpower Needs and Labor Market Information.

Of the total, 25% are university and college graduates, 30% are trained workers and the rest are manual ones.

In fact, businesses in the city are in dire need of trained workforce. Though many companies had announced their recruitment plans for months, they could not recruit enough workers.

Low monthly salaries and bonuses are main reasons for the situation, the center said, explaining that manual workers want an average monthly salary of VND2 million (US$105), while skilled ones want the level of VND5 million. However, local enterprises find hard to meet the requirements.

Ho Chi Minh City now has 4.7 million people of working age. Of them, more than 250,000 laborers are working at the city’s 13 export processing zones (EPZs) and industrial parks (IPs).

The center forecast that firms will face more severe labor shortage in the future, as the city aims to build seven more IPs and enlarge the existing ones

The city has targeted to raise its trained workforce to 58% by late 2010 from 46% currently.