Globalisation and technology revolution are posing increasingly greater challenges for Vietnam’s economy, as the country’s labour force will grow from 55.5 million on 2016 to 62 million in 2025, said Deputy Minister of MoLISA Đào Hồng Lan. Hence improving workforce skills has become a top priority for Vietnam.

Vietnam will have to address to the changing technologies and skills needs in the labour market, with the changing nature of work in the era of technology, when many low-skilled workers will be at risk of losing jobs due to automation.

The Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on Tuesday organized a workshop, the theme of first National Policy Dialogue on Future of Work in Hanoi..

In order to annually increase the demand for jobs, the economy needs to create roughly 650 thousand jobs, and structural labour changes will be one of the feasible ways to increase labour productivity.

Two of the country’s major and growing production sectors--textile, clothing and footwear (TCF) and electronic and electrical products (EE)--are at the heart of the debate. These are also the country’s key exports, accounting for around 40 percent of the total manufacturing jobs. TCF manufacturing is predominantly characterized by labour intensive and low-skilled production.

As per the recent ILO study entitled “ASEAN in transformation” showed that 86 percent of Vietnam’s TCF workers could face a high risk of automation, whereas about three quarters of wage workers in EE sector could be replaced by robots in the coming decades.

The ILO suggested Vietnam enhance relevant workforce skills through close collaboration between policymakers, employers and training institutions to modernize the skills development system to meet changing workplace dynamics and new technology innovations.

Technology will create significant opportunities for closing the productivity gap, improving competitiveness and bettering working conditions.