The number of jobs in Vietnam fell in the third quarter of 2021 when compared to Q2 2021, according to data from Michael Page Vietnam.

Jobs dipped in Q3 2021 compared to Q2 due to the direct impact from the country's Q3 pandemic lockdown. New job positions opened were largely on the decrease within Engineering (down 45%) and Human Resources (down 31%).

Mark Donnelly, General Director of Michael Page Vietnam, said, "With all the government lockdown regulations, many manufacturing sites had to shut down temporarily in Vietnam. Engineering is a massive part of this sector and because quite a lot of Vietnam's GDP is in labour- intensive manufacturing, many companies in this sector were not able to function for those three-four months."

While those manufacturing factories are now coming back into operations with a more optimistic outlook, comparatively it was Vietnam's technology job opportunities which saw the least impact.

"Remote working escalated and that obviously requires a lot of technology and digital transformation. This is seen across many of Vietnam's key sectors such as education, property and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods)," Donnelly continued.

As confidence returns to Vietnam post-pandemic lockdown, this optimistic hiring activity in technology is expected to hold up across sectors. This will be driven by more companies going through large-scale transformation projects and the incoming investments into startups. Software developers and data analysts will be in high demand here as they form key roles in those organisations, according to Michael Page.

Donnelly added, "Within Vietnam's technology startup space, there is a lot of competing players entering the market from around the world and Southeast Asia. They offer a variety of ecommerce services such as banking, education, e-wallets or delivery. Apart from the technology skills required to implement these online, Vietnamese professionals at the management level are also in demand to lead and establish those businesses locally. A lot of them are aimed at providing accessibility to the population, so a larger percentage can either gain new connections to such services or these daily essentials can still be provided to the wider public in the event of another lockdown.”