Covid-19 impacts: IT sector bucks trend, offer more jobs

Q1 labor demand in the IT sector increased slightly by 3 percent over Q4 in 2019 and surged by 7 percent year-on-year, according to recrutiment firm Navigos Search.

IT recruitment firm TopDev's market report for Q1 also stated that labor demand was not affected much by the pandemic. Some large IT companies in Saigon and Hanoi let all employees work from home without impacting work progress.

Salaries in this sector also did not see much change compared to the last three quarters of last year.

E-commerce is among the sectors with largest Q2 demand for labor in Saigon, in particular for delivery workers, according to the Ho Chi Minh City Center for Human Resources Forecasting and Labor Market Information (FALMI).

Navigos Search has also said that the sector needs junior and senior level personnel in business development and marketing as well as people with technical expertise. 

E-commerce businesses are prioritizing recruiting experienced people. These companies are even willing to pay higher salaries than other sectors and this trend to is likely to continue for next three to five years, Navigos predicted.

A number of other industries like healthcare, medicine, online customer care and services, marketing and food processing are also expected to post higher employment rates in the second quarter.

Navigos Search said that the industrial real estate sector is looking for personnel for senior positions, notably sales director. It also paints a positive human resources outlook this year for the the energy industry, especially renewable energy.

In the hard-hit tourism industry, businesses are limiting recruitment and candidates are also afraid to seek new opportunities.

The Ho Chi Minh City Tourism Department has said that up to 90 percent of small and medium-sized travel businesses in the city have stopped operations amid the crisis. Some large private enterprises are only maintaining on site personnel.

Currently, many tourism industry employees have taken unpaid leave or earning 20-30 percent of their salary until the pandemic passes. Some office workers and tour guides are looking for seasonal work, notably online sales, to earn an extra income.

The manufacturing industry has stopped recruiting workers despite having the highest demand for middle and senior personnel in the first quarter of 2020, up 14 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2019 and up 27 percent over the same period last year.

If the pandemic drags on, some manufacturing companies could stop recruiting and look for other ways to scale-up production due to shortage of production materials and slow sales, according to FALMI.

To combat the economic impacts of Covid-19, the government has directed banks nationwide to provide VND285 trillion ($12.1 billion) worth of credit to affected businesses.