In this report, the research team will conduct gender-sensitive assessment of impact of the pandemic on key labor market outcomes in 2020 (the number of workers, the number of working hours, hourly income, social insurance, employment contract, employment status etc.). This ex-post impact assessment will be done on a frequent basis by doing in-depth analysis of the dataset of the labor force survey (LFS) released by GSO. The LFS is conducted by the General Statistical Office (GSO), starting in 2007. It is statistically representative at the regional level by quarter and the level of provinces by year. Since 2018, GSO has conducted LFS on a quarterly basis, and all four rounds of LFS share the similar design of questionnaires consisting of three parts: 1) basic demographic information of all members of households; 2) general information of members aged 15 and over (including gender, ethnicity, migration status
etc.); 3) employment and relating information (including formal vs. informal, the number of working hours, incomes of wage earners etc.) of members aged 15 and over. The sampling frame of LFS 2007 was constructed based on 3% of the 1999 Population Census, whereas the sampling frame of LFS from 2009 to 2018 was based on the 15% of Population Census in 2009. The sampling frame of LFS 2019 was constructed based on the 40% of Population Census in 2019.
As such, the LFS datasets are very useful for rapid ex-post assessment of employment and income impacts of the pandemic. Analysis can be done at different levels of disaggregation. Data in 2018 and 2019 can be used as the baseline (pre-pandemic) so that comparing data of 2020 with the baseline data enables us to approximate the impact of the pandemic on the labor market performance, with a focus on gender disparities in labor market outcomes. The selection of two sectors – textile and garment, and hospitality industries - follows the project document to enable cross-country comparisons.
The structure of this report is as follows. Besides the introduction and conclusion, the report is divided into five main sections. Section 1 provides general background on economic growth and export-import situation in Vietnam. The growth rate of manufacturing and service sectors in general and that of garment & textile (T&G) and hospitality related sub-sectors is also presented in this section. Furthermore, this section will provide general gender pattern in
the labor force and in T&G and hospitality in Vietnam. The second section describes the changes in the number of workers, employment status, social insurance, employment contract, working hours and hourly income in the T&G sector comparing with those in the manufacturing and the whole economy in 2018, 2019 and 2020. The same structure is applied to analysis of the hospitality sector in section 3. Section 4 focuses on the impacts of the pandemic on domestic migrant workers, who are presumably among the most vulnerable people in the pandemic time. Finally, section 5 provides information related to informal and vulnerable employment in the context of the pandemic.