The labor productivity should be seen as a function in each nation

Labor productivity should be seen as a function in each nation

A report showing of the International Labor Organization (ILO) released that the labour productivity rate in Vietnam is the lowest in the Asia Pacific region, but it noted later that productivity rates do not necessarily reflect workers’diligence and abilities.

The report said that the average labor productivity rate in Vietnam was 1/15th that of Singapores. The report sparked a debate among the public in Vietnam and in the international, of course the experts said it does not truly reflect Vietnamese workers' ability.

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Vietnamese mainly work in the textile and garment sectors, and therefore they can not create high added value. Meanwhile, Singaporeans mainly work in the service sector and high tech industry, so which automatically allows them to create higher added value than Vietnamese' worker.

Malte Luebker, a expert at ILO in Asia Pacific, said ILO defined the Vietnamese labor productivity by calculating the number of products created by a unit of workers, or created during one working hour.

However, The experts said the labor productivity of a nation cannot truly reflect the diligence and ability of the workers.

This is because the labor productivity of a nation depends on many factors, including the enterprises’ efficient use of labor, as well as the machines and technologies the workers used in the factory.

Therefore, it would be unreasonable to say that Singaporean level of worker digilence is higher or can create a certain product more quickly than Vietnamese during the same unit of time.

In Vietnam, a large part of the labor force still works in agriculture and unofficial economic locality, where they can not access modern machines and modern technologies, therefore led to the low labor productivity rate.

Meanwhile, Singaporeans have higher labor productivity because the economy is based on manufacturing and high-level services, such as finance and insurance and the high tech industry in the work.

Labor productivity should be seen as a function that shows the economic structure of a nation, of course the productivity rates do not reflect level of worker’ diligence.

ILO said ASEAN countries can improve their labor productivity by utilizing modern technologies and machines in production, and by paying higher attention to the training of workers. Need to improves the skills and foreign language skills and recruitrment soloutions for the employees.