By Mehmet Enes Beşer
Labor export has been a progressive solution to Vietnam’s demographic and economic pressures for decades. Overseas workers’ remittances are significantly responsible for country income, curtail unemployment, and often fund investment in housing, education, and healthcare by their families. Foreign work is the portal to economically transformative mobility for some young Vietnamese, especially youth from rural provinces. Yet although there can be no question of the short-term gain to labor export, Vietnam now needs to balance its over-reliance on the model. Its sustainable, competitive economy should have at its foundation a healthy, productive domestic labor market, creating quality jobs, rewarding productivity, and meeting an increasingly developing economy’s need.
Vietnam’s foreign labor programs have become highly institutionalized, with cooperation between Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and most Middle Eastern countries. The government subsidizes recruitment, training, and remittance transfer while remittances-more than USD 18 billion annually-still underpin Vietnam’s current account balance and rural consumption. But this model is not costless. Workers face poor working conditions, extortionate placement fees, legal vulnerabilities, and a lack of recognition of their skills upon return. Moreover, overemphasis on labor export can be used to divert attention from underlying structural issues of Vietnam’s domestic economy: surplus of low-skilled employment, dependence on the informal economy, and regional labor market disparities.
As Vietnam transitions to a high-value, knowledge-based economy—in accordance with its socio-economic development strategy—it can no longer rely on labor export as a sure-shot employment policy. Instead, it must view it as a bridging time that allows it to buy time to invest in more longer-term competitiveness. This bridging begins with three imperative areas: skills development, employment creation, and labor market reform.
Most prominent of these is that Vietnam must dramatically improve its technical and vocational education and training (TVET) systems. While most foreign labor programs include pre-departure training, these are generally host-country specific and of limited scope. A future-proofed workforce, however, demands transferable skills, resilient to technological development, and aligned with domestic industry needs. This means revitalizing vocational institutes, more explicitly linking curricula to market demand, increasing teacher training, and facilitating greater employer-educator interaction.
Second, it is important to generate jobs in high-productivity sectors. Vietnam’s industrial policy must extend beyond export-led manufacturing and cover investment in high-technology manufacturing, green energy, IT services, digital platforms, and high-value agriculture. Public investment in infrastructure, especially in secondary cities and lagging regions, can also absorb labor and generate long-term economic capacity. Entrepreneurship, innovation, and small business development policies, especially for returning migrant workers, can also boost employment domestically.
Third, Vietnam’s labor market needs more flexibility and protection. Informal employment remains dominant, without benefits, training, or employment security for workers. Labor market institutions must find a balance between more flexibility for employers and more stability for workers. There is a need for revision of labor codes, expansion of social protection, and enhancement of labor inspection and dispute resolution. Online job-to-skills matching platforms can enhance mobility and reduce inefficiencies in labor allocation.
Crucially, any strategy to terminate reliance on labor export must include thoughtful reintegration policies. Returned workers are too frequently only treated as passive remittance recipients rather than being respected as assets in economic transformation. Official schemes must offer skills certification, upskilling, enterprise assistance, and access to work upon return. Vocational centers and local authorities can assist in designing support to fit local economic opportunities.
We cannot ignore that there is an international dimension to this. While it works to reduce the dependence on labor export, Vietnam can still optimize the quality, safety, and development impact of overseas employment. Bilateral labor agreements must include greater protection, recognition of qualifications, and fair recruitment. Collaboration with host countries can offer mutual training programs and mobility pathways of benefit to both sides, not exploitative.
Conclusion
Labor export has, in fact, been good for Vietnam—filling labor shortages, underpinning rural incomes, and easing economic pressures. But as the economy matures and Vietnam sets its sights on high-income status, over-reliance on foreign labor markets must give way to a more pressing imperative: the development of a robust, inclusive, and competitive domestic labor market.
This shift won’t happen overnight. It will require investment in infrastructure and education, in labor governance reforms, and in policy reprioritization. But the payoff is well worth it: a Vietnam where young workers thrive at home, economic growth is driven by domestic opportunity, and prosperity is built not on necessity-driven migration, but on sustainable national development.