A lot of businesses’ managers, and team leaders have also joined the army of unemployed people who get unemployment benefits.

People register their unemployment

Unskilled workers or officers are believed to be the biggest sufferers in the economic crisis, because they are the first targets of the lay-off plans that enterprises would carry out to cut down expenses. However, in fact, qualified officers and experienced managers have also become redundant.

Director watches TV to kill time

According to Dr Dang Quang Dieu from the Vietnam Labor Federation, Vietnam is seriously lacking senior managers and qualified workers. However, the high quality manpower proves to be very choosy about jobs. If they cannot find good jobs which can bring high income, they would rather accept to stay redundant and wait for their new opportunities, than accepting simple jobs with moderate income.

Besides, Dieu said, about 12,000 businesses, mostly the ones in industrial zones and export processing zones had to stop operation or got dissolved in the first quarter of 2012. This means that the CEOs and senior managers of the enterprises have also become redundant like unskilled workers, and they have met big difficulties.

Both reasons have explained why the number of high ranking executives, who have become unemployed, has been on the increase.

The Hanoi Job Center has confirmed that a lot of people, who once held the important positions at enterprises, also came to register their unemployment in April. They have given up the jobs because their companies decided to scale down the production and dismiss the staff to cut down expenses.

These include the brand director of a big cosmetics company, who got 30 million dong in salary at work, not including allowances and commissions, and the managing director of a construction company, who got 40-50 million dong a month. 

Both of them decided to resign from the posts after their companies cut down the labor force in a plan to cut down expenses.

“They have many opportunities to find new jobs, but they still decided to stay off work after a long period of working and bearing pressure from the jobs. They have registered unemployment to get unemployment benefit which would help them live while waiting for new opportunities,” said Nguyen Thi Kim Loan, Head of the Unemployment Insurance Division of the Hanoi Job Center.

One of the men who came to register his unemployment in late April was a man, 28, who was a finance director.

The high bank loan interest rates put big difficulties for his company and lead to the business stagnation. 40 percent of the company’s staff was sacked. The man was not among the 40 percent, but he still decided to resign from the post.

His daily main works are watching TVs, surfing on Internet and playing sports.

Big unemployment benefits for “big guys”

Also according to Loan, 63 percent of the people registering their unemployment were unskilled workers, while the other 35 percent have university or junior college degrees, or they are high quality workers.

Of the 35 percent of unemployed with university and junior college degrees, 10 percent were once the experts or managers of small and medium enterprises. There were also the bosses of relatively big enterprises.

A project chief coordinator of a foreign invested project reportedly received 2000 dollars a month, or 42 million dong. However, he has become unemployed after the project terminated. With the high salary of 42 million dong, he now gets the high unemployment benefit of 9.96 million dong a month. 

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, those people who have the monthly income of 10 million dong are considered high income earners. As such, the unemployment benefits of many people are the dream of many other working people.

Source: Lao dong/ VNN