HCM City (VNA) - More than 41,400 new jobs were created in HCM City in the first four months of the year, a year-on-year inc😼rease of 0.49 percent, according to a report by the Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs.

Tran Anh Tuan, deputy director of the city’s Centre for Forecasting Manpower Needs and Labour Market Information, attributed this to the fact that many companies have been expanding operations. They need 20,000 workers this month, 30 percent of them college and university graduates, he said. Workers with vocational training and unskilled ones will account for 35 percent each. Demand is high in the textile and garment, information technology, architecture, construction, real estate, transportation, and foreign trade sectors. The number of job seekers is estimated to rise in the next few months as new graduates come into the market, Tuan said. Highly skilled workers would be in great demand for the rest of the year, he said. Companies based in industrial parks and export processing zones need 25,360 workers this year, according to the HCM City Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority (HEPZA). Around 14,600 of them are needed for the companies to expand operations, Tran Cong Khanh, head of the HEPZA office, said. Most of the vacancies are in the footwear, electronics and textile and garment sector, with manual jobs accounting for a majority. Demand for mid-level and senior managers rose dramatically -- by 48 percent year-on-year -- in the first quarter of the year, according to a report from Navigos Search, a provider of executive search services. The manufacturing sector ranked first in terms of demand with 29 percent, followed by consumer goods and retail (16 percent) and banking/ insurance/ securities/ finance (12 percent). In terms of jobs, workers in sales and marketing, IT engineering, electrical-electronic engineering, and human resources were the most in demand. In March demand for workers rose by 60 percent over February 50 percent over January. The demand is likely to keep rising in the second and third quarters, according to a survey conducted by recruitment website JobStreet.com. The survey, which polled more than 370 companies in the first quarter, found that more than 80 percent planned to hire more staff than last year. Human resources are most sought after in sales, marketing, information and communications technology and engineering.-VNA