Vietnam’s youth join Chinese trend of ‘lying flat’ as pay stagnates amid booming economy

One young woman posted on the page: “I’ve only been working at the company for two weeks, but I know all the drama that has happened here over the past two years. Should I quit my job?”

The demands of work and the cost of city life are overwhelming, a young Vietnamese worker said this week in Asia.

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“I just came to the city for work. Housing in Ho Chi Minh City is too expensive,” said Jiang Phan, 22. She works full-time as a designer and part-time as an English teacher, earning VND13 million (US$530) a month.

Her income restricts her from sharing a 30 square meter (323 square foot) room with others without air conditioning.

“The moment I open the door to my room, people who live in the same building come in and talk to me. I don’t even have to invite them. They just come in with confidence,” Jiang said. Ta.

Like Giang, many young people in big cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City choose cheaper accommodation to focus on their careers.

Khanh Do, 22, a research assistant at a top university in Hanoi, rents a cheap apartment on the outskirts of the city with a monthly salary of 10 million dong.

“When you don’t have a lot of money, you shouldn’t want too much,” Khan said.

Growth, but for whom?

Economists say this may fall short, but in an economy targeting 7% growth this year, the story should be different for young workers.

In 2022, over USD 22 billion of FDI flowed into Vietnam, mainly from Singapore, Japan and China.

But experts say Vietnam, which hopes to become a developed high-income economy by 2045, needs to increase its production capacity to avoid falling into a “middle-income trap” in the next decade. It states that there is.

Local media outlet VnExpress reported in May that there were 10.8 million Vietnamese workers between the ages of 15 and 24, accounting for 21.4% of the country’s workforce. The average monthly salary for factory workers is VND5.3 million (US$220), which is expected to rise by only about US$50 by 2028, according to the US-based Institute for Economic Research.

For young workers, for whom housing is a primary concern, “high-paying” status is currently out of reach.

Tran Phuong Giang, academic director of the Tam Viet Institute, said: “It is certainly difficult for people working in the low-income sector to afford housing in urban areas, even if they are over 30 years old.” Stated.

However, young people working in information technology and semiconductor electronics earn higher salaries and “have the potential to buy a home,” Jiang added.

“With enough support from banking services, you can buy an apartment and gradually pay it back after working for five years,” she said.

The average household income in Ho Chi Minh City was about VND15 million a month in the first half of this year, but the average price of an apartment is between VND5.5 billion and VND6 billion, 30 times the average annual income. Announced in July by Savills, a global real estate consultancy.

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High interest rates and a crackdown on corruption are hurting Vietnam’s real estate market, analysts say.

In March, the Vietnamese government sought to address challenges in the real estate market, pressuring state-owned and commercial banks to lower lending rates and inject capital into the economy. But these efforts have been slow to bear fruit, with a report from global real estate services firm JLL showing that home prices remained largely unchanged, rising 0.4% from the second quarter of this year to the third.

“The net effect is very weak supply and reduced demand, creating one of the softest markets in recent times,” said Troy Griffiths, deputy managing director of Savills Vietnam. .

But he remains bullish about young people’s prospects in a growing economy. “Vietnam is better positioned for Gen Z than many other global competitors.”

Mr Giang said Vietnam wants to move up the value chain and provide higher quality and higher paying jobs in innovation and research and development.

Until that happens, research assistant Khan remains grateful for any kind of work.

“My life is like a half-eaten cupcake,” he said. “But I’m grateful I still have enough optimism to keep eating it!”