Vietnam saw a year-on-year fall in the number of workers joining the labour market in the first quarter but increases in average income, according to Pham Hoai Nam, Director of the Population and Labour Statistics Department at the General Statistics Office (GSO).

Illustrative image (Photo: VNA)

Vietnam saw a year-on-year fall in the number of workers joining the labour market in the first quarter but increases in average income, according to Pham Hoai Nam, Director of the Population and Labour Statistics Department at the General Statistics Office (GSO).

Nam said that workers' average monthly income in the first quarter stood at 6.3 million VND (273 USD), up 339,000 VND compared to the fourth quarter of 2020 and 106,000 VND year-on-year.

On an annual basis, the agro-forestry-fisheries sector recorded the highest rise in average income, 5.2 percent, followed by the service sector with 1.5 percent and industry-construction 0.8 percent.

In particular, the income of those with employment contract increased 556,000 VND compared to the fourth quarter of last year and 132,000 VND over the same time in 2020 to 7.2 million VND per month.

According to Nam, the return of COVID-19 before the Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday changed normal growth trends in the first quarter, with a fall of nearly 200,000 workers in the workforce compared to the same time last year and about 600,000 over the same time of 2019.

The proportion of workers joining the labour market was 66.7 percent in urban areas and 69.9 percent in rural areas.

The GSO reported that among 49.9 million employees, 39.5 percent (or 19.7 million) were employed in the service sector, 32.3 percent (16.1 million) in the industry-construction sector, and 28.2 percent (14.1 million) in the agro-forestry-fisheries sector.

In the first quarter, 57.1 percent of the workforce, or 20.7 million workers, were employed in the informal sector, down 251,700 over the fourth quarter of 2020 but up 525,400 over the same period last year, it said./.