VIETNAM will reduce its civil service workforce by 4,000 workers and has frozen all new hiring as the nation struggles to recover from the Covid-19 economic fallout.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc approved the proposal to reduce the number of workers and bring their numbers to 249,650 next year.
That would leave 247,344 workers in state agencies and administrative organisations, and the rest in diplomatic missions abroad, associations and civil service reserves.
According to a Vn Express news report, Nguyen had, in 2017, instructed government offices to reduce their staff by 1.5 to two per cent a year for the next five years.
He had said central and local agencies should make sure that only key employees were retained.
There will also be no fresh hiring in the healthcare and education sectors.
The civil service was cut from 265,100 in 2018 to 259,598 last year, and 253,000 this year.
Last June, Parliament deferred the 7.4 per cent wage hike for civil servants that was scheduled for July as the Covid-19 pandemic placed huge demands on funds.
With the hike, the monthly base salaries of public employees was set to go up from 1.49 million dong to 1.6 million dong.
In the private sector, the pandemic has caused 31.8 million workers aged 15 and above to either lose their jobs or have their working hours reduced.
This has resulted in the labour force shrinking by 1.2 million workers to 54.4 million in the January-September period.
The General Statistics Office said 14 per cent lost their jobs, while others had their salaries or working hours reduced or had to take unpaid leave.
The service sector was the hardest hit with almost 69 per cent of workers affected, followed by the processing and manufacturing industries (66.4 per cent) and agriculture (27 per cent).
The average monthly income recorded in the third quarter was 5.5 million dong, up 258,000 dong over the previous quarter.
The report said 1.2 million workers were out of work in the third quarter due to a second wave of infections that hit at least 15 localities, including cities like Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh and Da Nang.
The national unemployment rate for the first nine months was 2.48 per cent, 1.44 times that of the same period last year.
The aviation sector saw 99 per cent of employees losing their jobs, followed by tourism at 43 per cent and hospitality at 28 per cent.
Vietnam has suspended international flights and halted foreign arrivals since late March. While a few international flights have resumed, the country remains closed to foreign tourists.
The government has estimated that up to 70,000 people will lose their jobs monthly until the end of the year.