Nearly a third, or 30% of surveyed businesses in Vietnam have fewer than 10% of workers with sufficient English skills, which is considered a serious problem in the labour market, reports Vietnamnet citing survey research by ManpowerGroup Vietnam. The survey on recruitment trends in Q3 and Q4 2022 shows that 61% of polled businesses intend to increase recruitment activities from now to the end of the year, and 27% said they will not recruit more workers. Meanwhile 12% said they would decrease recruitment. The sharp rise in input material price increases which forces businesses to struggle to minimise costs could be one of the reasons behind businesses’ decisions to decrease recruitment. ManpowerGroup Vietnam’s recruitment experience shows that many Vietnamese workers cannot satisfy the requirements on soft skills amid strengthened digitization, including foreign language skills. This is one of the reasons it has been difficult to recruit workers. Up to 24% of businesses revealed that their proportion of workers who can use English skills proficiently is lower than 50%. A third, or 30%, of businesses acknowledged that under 10% of their workers have sufficient English skills to work.