For any country, an unemployment rate of below two percent is to die for, but the 1.84 percent rate Vietnam’s labor ministry recently released did not please experts and analysts. The country’s jobless rate in the second quarter of this year shrank to 1.84 percent, the lowest in a year, from 2.18 percent in the first quarter,the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairssaid in its bulletin on September 3, citing data from Institute of Labor Science and Social Affairs. Vietnam has one of the lowest jobless rates in the world, according to the bulletin. In comparison, the French unemployment rate rose in the second quarter to 10.2 percent from 10.1 percent in the first quarter, according to France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies. The official U.S. unemployment rate in the first half of this year was officially 6.5 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Dr. Nguyen Minh Hoa, dean of the Faculty of Urban Studies at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities, said Vietnam’s supposed rate is the result of an unscientific statistical method. “Experienced researchers are not surprised by such statistics, as they are used to them after spending a long time doing research in Vietnam,” Hoa said in a post sent to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on September 8. “What’s surprising is that such a statistical method can still be applied.” Hoa emphasized that the unemployment rate is not measured “just for fun,” or “to please someone.” “The jobless rate reflects the health of an economy. It is the most reliable, if not the only, grounds for the National Assembly and government to develop macro-economic policies and local administrations to issue policies for their areas,” he said. The 1.84 percent rate is extremely ideal, reflecting an almost absolute safe index for a nation. “But if the statistics are inaccurate, the consequences are huge,” he pressed. “Colleges and universities will be convinced that they have fulfilled their duties, as no students are unemployed after graduation; security agencies will be at ease as there will be fewer social criminals because few people are jobless; and the government will not need to fight poverty, as why bother assisting the poor while everybody has a job?” Hoa elaborated. On the macro-economy scale, international organizations and other countries will stop granting preferential loans or ODA to Vietnam because the country “has an economy even healthier than that of the EU and the U.S.” Unscientific statistics Hoa said he believes that “even those who prepared the statistics do not believe they are correct.” “If a person had even one hour of work prior to the time they were surveyed, he or she is not considered jobless,” Hoa quoted Nguyen Ba Ngoc, deputy head of the Institute of Labor Science and Social Affairs, as saying. This has resulted in an inaccurate reflection of the real job market, Hoa cited Ngoc as admitting. “The labor ministry said the Vietnamese economy is a flexible one, so anybody that can find an unstable job to meet their most basic demand is still not classified as unemployed,” Hoa said. So an engineer who took on the job of a xe om (motorbike taxi driver) after being sacked and a banker working as a waitress are both considered employed. “Such a conception has enabled Vietnam to achieve a ‘super low unemployment rate’ at a time when developed countries are marred by the global economic crisis,” he critiqued. Most countries measure their unemployment rate based on the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) criteria. In application of the international definition adopted in 1982 by the ILO, an unemployed person is a person of working age (15 or over) who meets three conditions simultaneously: – They were without employment, meaning that they did not work, even for one hour, in the course of the reference week; – They are available to take up employment within two weeks; – They have actively looked for a job in the previous month, or have found one starting within the next three months. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 08:40:28 +0000
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