HANOI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's labor market remained resilient in the first quarter, shrugging off mounting worries of a global slowdown, the Vietnam News reported on Friday.
Job growth continued with 1.1 million jobs added in the first three months to 51.1 million, which translates into a year-on-year rise of 2.2 percent, said the country's General Statistics Office (GSO).
Meanwhile, details of the statistics office's closely-watched employment report were also positive, with the unemployment rate falling to 2.25 percent from 2.46 percent a year ago. The country recorded a total of 1.05 million unemployed in the period, down 5.8 percent from a year ago and down 1.2 percent from the last quarter of 2022, official data showed.
The labor force participation for prime-age workers above 15 years old increased to 52.2 million people from around 51 million last year, said the statistics office, noting that the unemployment among working-age Vietnamese sharply dropped 33 percent to 885,500 people in the period.
The gains in employment in the first quarter were led by the service sector, which accounted for 39 percent of job gains over the last three months, followed by the industrial manufacturing and construction sector, and the agriculture, forestry and fishery sector.
With the labor market remaining strong, average monthly earnings increased 10 percent to 7 million Vietnamese dong (around 300 U.S. dollars) from a year earlier, Pham Hoai Nam, head of the GSO's population and labor statistics department, said at a press conference.
The earnings difference between women and men continued as working women were still paid less than working men. In the first quarter, women earned an average of nearly 74 percent of what men earned, according to the GSO's analysis of median monthly earnings.
The latest data also revealed the income gap between urban and rural employment as urban earnings exceed rural earnings by 2.5 million dong (106 dollars).
"The labor market continued to maintain its recovery momentum in the first quarter of 2023 with extended improvements in labor force participation and job growth," said Nguyen Trung Tuyen, deputy head of the statistics office. ■