Workforce doesn’t change over the last 5 years The number of workers at enterprises has reportedly not increased over the last 5 years. New workers have been employed to offset the left ones, not to serve the enterprises’ business expansion plans.   “Creating jobs” or “giving jobs”? The latest survey conducted by the Tri Viet Human Resource Development Center at 200 enterprises with 60,000 workers in different business fields in HCM City has shown a surprising thing: the number of employees at the enterprises has not increased over the last 5 years. In 2008, the enterprises reportedly had 60,000 workers, and the same figure had been reported by the end of 2012. The director of an enterprise in the Tan Tao Industrial Zone in HCM City said the company has recruited new workers; however, the recruitment just aims to offset the ones who have give up the jobs. A report released five years ago showed that the industrial zones and export processing zones in HCM City employed 250,000 workers. And the number has been preserved over the last 5 years. The above said director has attributed the immovability of the workforce to the economic recession, which has caused to the slow sales of products and the production stagnation. He said no one would be foolish enough to recruit more workers at this moment, if he doesn’t intend to scale up the production. It is estimated that it’ll take VND50 million on average to create a new job. Most of the money would be spent on the initial investments, machines and equipments, materials and advertisements to make the products to be generated by the worker salable. “Why do we have to recruit more workers, if we have to scale down production and suffer from the big inventories?” questioned Truong Minh Hoa, Director of Tan Company in HCM City. Every year, the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) submits to the National Assembly the plans and the solutions to create 1.5-1.7 million jobs. In HCM City, the number is about 250,000 every year. A question has been raised that where the new workers are working, if enterprises have confirmed that they don’t create new jobs? Ta Quang Hung, Director of an information technology firm in district 12 in HCM City, has noted that people seem to have misunderstanding about the concept of “creating jobs” and “giving jobs to workers.” The former should be understood as the number of new jobs created thanks to the establishment of new factories or companies, or the business expansion of the existing enterprises. Meanwhile, the latter means that someone gets a job at a factory or enterprise. This could be the issue the MOLISA mentions. It’s more important to create new jobs, because this shows the development of the national economy. Where have dissolved businesses’ workers gone? The government many years ago set up a goal of obtaining 500,000 businesses by 2010, including 98 percent of small and medium enterprises. The end had been reached by 2010. However, some changes have occurred since then. The Ministry of Planning and Investment, in 2012, when checking the number of businesses, found out that 541,000 businesses were existing on paper, but 93,000 of them were unfound in reality, while 16,000 enterprises, which registered their business, had not been operational yet.  The report also showed that 24,000 businesses suspended their operation, 31,000 were following the procedures to get dissolved. In the first quarter of the year, 13,000 more enterprises stopped operation. NLD