The unemployment rate of those aged 15-24 accounted for 48% of total unemployment in 2013, one official said.

Unemployment rate among university grads remains high

Nguyen Thi Xuan Mai, the Director of the General Statistics Office (GSO)’s Population and Labour Statistics Department, said at a press conference held on December 23 that the unemployment rate among university graduates is also high.

According to Mai, the number of unemployed university graduates between the ages of 21 and 29 reached just over 100,000 during the year, representing about 10% of the total number of unemployed in that age group.

The number of unemployed people aged above 15 was around one million more than in 2013, 48% of whom were aged between 15 and 24.

Statistics showed that the country has 53.65 million people above 15, up 1.61% from a year earlier. The number of people who are of working age reached 47.49 million, accounting for about 53% of the country’s population, up just under 1% from last year.

Non-contracted labour accounted for around 34% out of total 52.4 million people 15 and above. The rate of non-contracted labour in urban areas reached above 47%, while in rural areas it was only 28.6%, up 0.6% compared to the figure of 2012.

Nguyen Bich Lam, Director of GSO, attributed the rise in the number of non-contracted labour to the considerable labour transformation from official sectors.

The unemployment rate among those who are of working age was 2.2% in 2013, up 0.24% on year. The rate in urban areas was 3.6% and in rural areas was 1.6%, up 0.37% and 0.19% respectively from a year earlier.

“The increase in the unemployment rate has been a result of economic difficulties faced by businesses and the large number of companies that went bankrupt this year,” Lam commented.

An estimated 60,737 enterprises went bankrupt or were forced to halt operations during the past year, up almost 12% from last year. Of the total, 9,818 enterprises have bankrupt, up 4.9% from the previous year.

Even though the number of new enterprises increased by about 10% to 76,955 in 2013, total registered capital fell, almost 15% compared to 2012, to VND398.7 trillion (USD18.88 million).