Nguyen Dai Dong, head of the Employment Division under MoLISA, said some 300,000 people might be affected by the economic slowdown.

The industrial and service sectors, which employ around 9 million workers, will be hardest hit while over 35 million agricultural labourers will see their working hours reduced by a rise in unemployment.

The Ministry plans to create between 3-3.2 million jobs over this year and the next in an effort to keep the urban employment rate under 5 percent and reduce the proportion of workers involved in agriculture to under 50 percent.

It is expecting around 100,000 Vietnamese to find work abroad each year, 60 percent of them skilled labour, and 10 percent from poor districts.

Meanwhile, a decree on unemployment insurance that took effect from the first day of this year is expected to partly mitigate the impact of economic slowdown.

The decree provides a framework for laid off workers who cannot find another job to receive insurance for three to 12 months depending on how long they’ve paid to the fund.