Vietnam’s hiring boom is colliding with a growing workforce reality: companies want to hire more people, but rising salary demands, weak mid-management pipelines, and digital skill shortages are making talent harder and costlier to secure.According to the Vietnam Employer Hiring Study 2026 released by Reeracoen Vietnam, 69% of employers expect hiring activity to increase in 2026, yet fewer than half plan to raise recruitment budgets. The mismatch highlights what the firm describes as an “efficiency paradox” — organisations are under pressure to scale hiring while doing more with limited resources.
For the workforce, the shift signals intensifying competition for experienced and digitally skilled talent. Salary inflation has emerged as the biggest pressure point, with 86% of employers identifying rising salary expectations as their top hiring challenge, while 84% expect to increase salaries for new hires. At the same time, a third of employers see salary competition as their biggest retention risk, underscoring how wage pressures are reshaping both hiring and employee mobility.
The study also points to a widening “mid-level talent vacuum” in Vietnam’s labour market. Employers are struggling most to fill experienced operational and leadership roles, particularly manufacturing engineers, sales professionals, and factory supervisors — positions critical to business continuity and industrial growth. While Vietnam continues to produce graduate talent at scale, companies are finding it harder to build or retain the next layer of managers needed to support expansion.Digital capability is emerging as another defining workforce divide.
Nearly three-quarters of employers identified digital and AI-related skills as the country’s most urgent upskilling priority, reflecting how automation and AI adoption are rapidly changing expectations across manufacturing, logistics, and commercial functions. Increasingly, digital fluency is no longer confined to technology roles but becoming a baseline requirement across sectors.
The findings suggest Vietnam’s workforce market is entering a new phase where employability will increasingly depend on adaptability, technical capability, and leadership readiness. For employees, the report signals stronger opportunities for those with digital and managerial skills, but also growing pressure on workers to continuously upskill as employers raise expectations in an increasingly competitive labour market.