Human resources must be equipped with appropriate knowledge and skills to prepare for 4.0 Industrial Revolution

The most intense competition among ASEAN countries is the competition of human resources.

The 4th industrial revolution (revolution 4.0) is a great opportunity and challenge for Vietnam in the context of implementing the commitments of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

According to the forecast, the 4.0 revolution will be the foundation for Vietnam’s economy to transform from a resource-based, low-cost labor model to a knowledge economy. At the same time, the 4.0 revolution also created a big change in labor supply and demand, with the emergence of new technology, the number of employees may be reduced to 1/10 compared to the current.

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), Vietnam is the most affected country from the 4.0 revolution. The occupation of unskilled workers will be greatly affected and the risk of unemployment is very high. In that context, many industries will disappear but there will also be many new trades.

Thus, human resources must be retrained, equipped with appropriate knowledge and skills. Currently, our country not only competes with ASEAN countries but also with many countries around the world. If Vietnam does not have the necessary preparation, it will surely be unable to overcome the middle income trap that our country is facing.

The current human resources of Vietnam have not met the demand for quality and labor structure. In particular, labor productivity is the most important issue. According to the Center for Socio-Economic Information and Forecasting, the state-owned labor productivity is the lowest. At present, 65% of foreign-invested business owners believe that the training of skills in schools is not in line with the requirements of enterprises.

Data from the General Department of Vocational Education of the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs showed that the labor force trained at the college level has an unemployment rate of 27.2%, while it is 5.3% and 2.2% at the primary and intermediate levels. The limitations and weaknesses of human resources are greatly affecting the competitiveness of the economy.

Vietnam needs to vigorously innovate thinking about education and training. This change is being reflected in the Draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the University Education Law.

According to the latest statistics of the Ministry of Education and Training, there are hundreds of thousands of public university graduates and tens of thousands of private university graduates unemployed. In the third quarter of 2017, the number of unemployed people with university and above qualifications increased 53,900 people compared to the second quarter of 2017, equivalent to 4.51%.

Another consequence is that graduates are still vague about career orientation. The orientation for students before and after entering university in our country is very poor. Meanwhile, in many countries around the world, career orientation is conducted very early, even universities continue to orient students.

In addition, our country does not have a national forecast on labor demand. According to the Decision 579 of the Prime Minister, the forecast of labor demand is assigned to the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, the forecast of training needs is assigned to the Ministry of Education and Training, but in one session questioning before the National Assembly, Minister of Education and Training Phung Xuan Nha admitted, the forecast of annual training needs of Vietnam is not good, need to change in the future.

A peculiarity of the 4.0 industry is the connection and data sharing. Currently, our country is building a national database on population. This will be the original database to connect specialized databases of ministries and branches.

The revised University Education Law will be submitted to the National Assembly by the Ministry of Education and Training in May, hoping to address the shortcomings related to Vietnam’s human resource training to meet the need of high quality manpower in the 4.0 revolution.

Productivity and Quality Office