Vietnam has 30.8 million people hurt by new coronavirus: report

Among the 30.8 million people, 1.2 million were in the non-working population and 28.7 retained their jobs but have had their working hours and income reduced.

The General Statistics Office (GSO) said on July 10 that the services sector was the hardest hit with 72% of workers affected, followed by the industrial and farming sectors, with their respective ratios of affected jobs at 67.8% and 25.1%.

The report covers the first six months of 2020, during which the Vietnamese economy expanded by 1.81%, a record low for many years.

The impact of the coronavirus outbreak was the greatest in the second quarter when Vietnam recorded many cases of local transmission and social distancing measures were strictly enforced in April in order to contain the virus.

The economy grew by a mere 0.36% in the April to June period.

According to the GSO, the number of people with jobs witnessed its strongest decline for the past ten years.

In the second quarter, 51.8 million from Vietnam’s total working population had jobs, down 2.4 million from the previous quarter and down 2.6% compared with the same quarter in 2019.

Data has shown that employment fell mainly in rural areas and among women, with jobs in rural areas plummeting by 2.1 million from a year ago and working women in employment down 1.5 million.

According to the GSO, the average monthly income of a worker in the second quarter was VND5.2 million (US$223), down 5.1% from a year ago, this being the first drop in the past five years.