U30 jobless college grads numbered over 100,000

Unemployed Vietnamese people who are between 21 and 29 years old and have a college degree have surged almost 70 percent over the past three years, official statistics show, as experts blame unemployment on limited job market forecasts. 

The number of such people has risen to 101,000 this year from 60,000 in 2010, the General Statistics Office of Vietnam said Monday at a press conference in Hanoi.

In other words, the number of unemployed people with a tertiary degree between 21 and 29 years old accounts for 9.89 percent of the total jobless count in that age bracket.

Currently there are more than 1 million out-of-work people in the working age but nearly half of them (48 percent) are between the age of 15 and 24.

The working age in Vietnam starts from 15 until 59 for men and 15 to 54 for women.

The office estimates that Vietnam’s working-age population will reach 47.49 million on January 1, up 409,200 people year on year.

Poor job forecasts

In September, the education minister admitted to lawmakers that many college graduates cannot find work after graduation, a situation worsened by the current global economic slowdown.

Luan complained that the absence of information on the country’s manpower and job market is to blame as many have applied for a major in college while they are still in the dark about future jobs.

Poor workforce planning has also caused the problem of job shortages, the educator said.

Universities should be held accountable as well since they do not establish a close relationship with employers to know about their demand for human resource, Luan added.

As a result they keep churning out graduates while there are not enough work for them, he pointed out.

The Ministry of Education and Training has identified this issue and thus banned higher learning schools from adding finance-banking, business administration, and accounting majors to their current training programs.

It has also suggested the government to prohibit the establishment of new universities that specialize in these majors.

The agency has asked local schools to limit new admissions to pedagogical disciplines given a surplus of graduates in the education sector.

Tran Anh Tuan, vice director of a Ho Chi Minh City manpower forecaster, agreed with Luan that universities should take certain responsibility because they have produced too many graduates as compared to market demands.

Ho Chi Minh City needs to recruit 34,450 college graduates per year but around 70,000 students annually graduate from city higher education institutions, Tuan elaborated.

He suggested that Vietnam should improve its forecasting work to gradually bridge the gap between the number of college graduates and the jobs available on the market.