40,000 more unemployed in 3 months

Environmental incidents in the Central provinces have had a major impact on unemployment rates in localities as well as across the country.

Figures just released by the General Statistics Office show that the number of unemployed people in the third quarter of 2016 was more than 1.16 million, an increase of 40,000 people compared to the second quarter. The increase in the same period last year was only 25,000 people.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Xuan Mai - Director of the Department of Population and Labor Statistics (General Statistics Office) said that the marine environmental incident in 4 central provinces last April was one of the main causes of this development. "The Formosa incident certainly caused the unemployment rate, labor, underemployment, and instability in some central provinces to increase, but the level of impact on each province is different," Ms. Mai said.

In the past three months, 40,000 more people have become unemployed nationwide.

In Ha Tinh alone, this incident affected nearly 23,000 households and tens of thousands of workers. Of these, nearly 24,500 people lost their jobs; nearly 19,500 people were completely unemployed; and nearly 5,000 people were temporarily employed. "After the environmental incident, the unemployment rate in Ha Tinh increased from 1.05% in March to 16.45%," Ms. Mai added.

Although the province has promoted its labor export program, it has only solved a part of the unemployment problem. By the end of August, more than 15,000 people in Ha Tinh had gone to work abroad. In the near future, there will be an additional 17,000 people going to work abroad, focusing on the markets of Taiwan, Korea, Japan... The main occupations are fishing, domestic work...

Among the remaining provinces, Quang Binh was the most affected, with the unemployment rate in this province increasing by 1.1% since the Formosa incident. In Quang Tri, the impact of this incident was mild because a part of the labor force had shifted to labor export. In Da Nang, the impact was also not much.

The Director of the Population Department also emphasized that the 40,000 additional unemployed people also include university graduates who have not found jobs after graduation.

According to VNE