CREATE PLACE, "BUILD NEST" FOR LAYER WORKFORCE

Part 1: General Secretary To Lam's suggestive speech and the urgent issue of streamlining the apparatus

General Secretary To Lam's direction on labor market development demonstrates the urgency and practicality of the need to create jobs, contributing to absorbing the number of workers leaving the state sector after streamlining.

Speaking at the Government's conference on implementing work in 2025 earlier this year, General Secretary To Lam outlined eight key and directional contents. In the eighth content, the General Secretary raised a series of questions about restructuring employment and promoting the development of the labor market in the new era of the nation.

"We have talked a lot about preparing "nests" for "eagles", this is very true, very much worth doing. But why do we rarely mention the plan to prepare "forests" and "fields" for "bee colonies" to collect flowers to make honey?

Why haven't we set targets for creating new jobs for each period and each sector? In the coming period, about 100,000 workers will leave the state sector due to the impact of streamlining the political system and 100,000 young people will return to their localities after completing their military service. So what policies does the Government have so that the non-state sector can absorb some of them? What policies are there to develop the labor market and the job market?", General Secretary To Lam suggested.

The General Secretary emphasized that "economic restructuring must have employment structure".

Prof. Dr. Hoang Van Cuong, member of the National Assembly's Finance and Budget Committee, commented that the General Secretary's suggestion to "prepare forests" and "fields" for "bee colonies" to collect flowers for honey is very sharp and practical.

According to Mr. Hoang Van Cuong, expanding production and business activities, creating the best investment environment and institutions to attract investors is very necessary. The economy must diversify its sectors, open up many new sectors with high value chains, and promote the role of research and innovation to keep up with global trends.

"With the rapid development of the digital economy, artificial intelligence, and semiconductor industry, any country that quickly enters this economy will seize opportunities to develop new fields. These industries all require highly qualified human resources, and this is also a way to improve workers' skills," said delegate Hoang Van Cuong.

Besides encouraging the development of new economic sectors and high-value sectors, the Government must have solutions and policies to support the economy in renewing existing sectors.

With such diverse development, the economy will have more resources to develop as suggested by the General Secretary's question: "Prepare "forests" and "fields" for "bee colonies" to collect flowers for honey".

"If we do well in the above issue, attracting highly qualified workers with the ability to create new values will create a remarkable increase in labor productivity," said National Assembly delegate Hoang Van Cuong.

In the long term, with more "bees", the labor market will expand, creating more new jobs to absorb the abundant labor force of a country with a golden population advantage like Vietnam today.

In the immediate future, these new job positions will contribute to absorbing "about 100,000 workers leaving the state sector due to the impact of streamlining the political system and 100,000 young people completing their military service and returning to their localities", solving the question "what policies can the non-state sector take in part of them?" mentioned by General Secretary To Lam.

"What policy to develop the labor market, the job market?" is an open question, although short but addresses a very big issue, posing the problem of comprehensively developing the labor market effectively.

Experts highly appreciate the achievements of the labor sector in recent times. However, the labor market still has many "bottlenecks" such as the gap between supply and demand, low labor productivity, and unsatisfactory quality...

According to Professor Hoang Van Cuong, the three factors that make up the market are labor supply, business demand for human resources, and wages (labor prices). The level of development of the production sector will determine the labor demand of the economy.

He gave an example: "In the agricultural production sector, the workers are farmers. In the industrial and service production economy, the workers will move to that sector."

Looking at the current labor structure in our country, he found that 60% of workers are in the informal sector, which does not require standards, labor qualifications, or flexible scale of use... This leads to the fact that we do not have a defined production sector to determine labor resources.

The processing and manufacturing industry, considered a pillar of economic growth for many years, is also "not healthy". According to him, this sector mainly assembles and processes, not manufactures high-value products. Therefore, this sector does not require highly skilled workers, but mainly at the level of skilled workers.

"In the development curve, processing and assembly bring the lowest value. Low labor skills lead to low productivity and the value they create. Thus, the salary they receive is also not high," Mr. Cuong stated in practice.

Professor Hoang Van Cuong reiterated the proposed policies to support businesses and the economy to renew existing industries, develop new industries, and prepare "forests" for "bee colonies"...

When supported and oriented, instead of just processing, businesses switch to product design and master the production chain. Instead of importing components for assembly, businesses research and manufacture new components, increasing the value of the product...

"Entering the high value chain is an important restructuring step to create new jobs and attract workers. Higher job demands also require workers to improve their qualifications," Mr. Cuong emphasized.

According to Professor Hoang Van Cuong, when supply and demand change in nature as above, it leads to an improvement in the quality of labor resources. From there, productivity increases, wages increase, market bottlenecks are resolved, and more effective development occurs, and human resources will help the economy "take off".

On the contrary, in order for businesses to change and the economic structure to shift, the market must also prepare appropriate human resources, as General Secretary To Lam reminded: "Restructuring the economy must have a job structure".

Professor Hoang Van Cuong assessed that the approximately 100,000 workers who are about to leave the state sector in this streamlining round are a good source of human resources. Apart from a group of early retirees, those who choose to continue entering the labor market are a group of qualified and knowledgeable workers...

Mr. Cuong believes that part of it will be to take adaptive measures when leaving the state sector and contribute to the process of restructuring the job market, supporting economic restructuring.

The economic structure needs to shift to expand the market to absorb the above labor group. At the same time, the above labor group is also a human resource preparing for the need of economic structure shift.

Mr. Le Quang Trung, former Deputy Director in charge of the Department of Employment, Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, affirmed that job creation is a very important socio-economic indicator.

Achieving this target well will develop human resources, promote economic development, and contribute to attracting investors. At the same time, expanding the market and creating jobs are important tasks of the economy.

Therefore, he is satisfied with the direction of labor market development, setting new job creation targets for each stage and each field of General Secretary To Lam.

Mr. Le Quang Trung suggested that localities must have policies to promote new job creation. In addition to capital and land policies, he proposed adding job creation targets when approving new projects.

"We should set and consider this an important criterion for project approval and implementation at both local and central levels," the former Deputy Director in charge of the Department of Employment proposed.

However, for the market to operate effectively, it is not only necessary to have many jobs and high-quality workers, but also to have reasonable regulation to balance supply and demand.

In recent times, the labor market has had many paradoxes such as: "Excess teachers, lack of workers"; in large cities like Ho Chi Minh City, there is an excess of university-educated workers but a shortage of unskilled workers; industries that need highly-skilled workers do not have them, but industries that have a lot of them are not needed by businesses...

Therefore, the question "why haven't we set targets for creating new jobs for each stage and each field?" asked by General Secretary To Lam is very close to reality.

Because when the above criteria are met, training can closely follow market demand, eliminating the imbalance between supply and demand...

According to Mr. Le Quang Trung, the issue mentioned above by General Secretary To Lam is a prerequisite to promote labor market transformation.

"This is an urgent and practical requirement in the current context. A country that creates many new jobs, operates effectively and sustainably is a good condition for economic development and investment attraction," Mr. Trung emphasized.

National Assembly delegate Nguyen Thi Viet Nga also agreed with the above reminder of General Secretary To Lam.

"These are correct and timely directions, urgent for the Government and labor management agencies to study and implement policies to remove obstacles. Because diversifying the market and creating new jobs are the key to increasing labor productivity. If the quality of human resources is not improved, annual economic growth will be difficult to achieve as expected," emphasized the Russian delegate.