Vietnam job market cools for graduates as firms favor experienced hires: report

Recruitment platform JobOKO said demand for senior staff and specialists with three to five years' experience or more rose over 40 percent across most sectors in 2025, while hiring for fresh graduates with less than one year of experience fell 13 percent from a year earlier.

The findings are based on an analysis of about 580,000 job postings from the first 10 months, along with surveys of more than 1,200 managers and human resource professionals and nearly 1,600 job seekers, JobOKO said in its annual salary and employment report for 2025–2026.

The decline in demand for entry-level workers was most pronounced in administrative and human resource roles, accounting, finance, and banking, marking the second consecutive year of sharp contraction in those fields, the report said.

Workers with less than one year of experience also accounted for the largest share of lay-offs, at 45 percent, as companies cited skills mismatches, restructuring, weaker business performance, and efforts to cut labor costs.

Despite the cuts, most firms continued hiring to replace departing staff, typically at levels equivalent to 5–10 percent of their workforce. 

Nearly 80 percent of the new hires had one to three years of experience, JobOKO said.

Overall job postings rose just over two percent year on year, but growth was uneven across sectors. 

Construction, manufacturing, legal services, and architecture and interior design saw gains, while hiring fell in human resources, logistics, IT and software, import-export, and finance and banking.

Among sectors previously considered 'hot,' only marketing and communications have maintained steady growth over the past three years, the report showed, while demand cooled sharply in finance, IT, sales, and trade-related roles.

Vietnam's unemployment rate remained low at 2.2 percent, but youth unemployment stayed elevated at nearly 8.4 percent and was higher in urban areas at 11.3 percent, according to the report. 

Underemployment stood at about four percent, down from a year earlier.

Looking ahead to 2026, 89 percent of the companies surveyed said they plan to expand hiring, with sales, marketing, and manufacturing roles expected to account for the largest share of new jobs. 

Employers said they would continue to prioritize candidates with one to five years of experience and job-ready technical skills.

However, JobOKO said concerns over candidate quality persist, as many applicants fall short of both technical and soft-skill requirements amid intensifying competition for skilled labor.