Recently, a post in a Vietnamese social media group about urban economies sparked considerable discussion: "More and more Bangladeshi youths are coming to southeastern Vietnam as laborers." The accompanying photo showed hundreds of Bangladeshi workers attending a legal and traffic safety briefing at a factory in the south. The issue also triggered industry debate, with the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore publishing a special analysis on the matter.

For ordinary Vietnamese who are used to seeing Vietnamese laborers spread across Japan, South Korea, and the Middle East, this scene does look somewhat unfamiliar. Vietnam has been a major labor-exporting country for decades, sending over 144,000 workers abroad in 2025, with a target of 112,000 for 2026. Yet now it has begun to "import" workers into the country.

This is not accidental, but the beginning of a long-term trend. Several structural factors are pushing Vietnam in this direction.

Why Vietnam is Beginning to Import Labor

The first reason, and the most relentless driver, is Vietnam's demographic shift—the population is aging faster than income growth allows. The proportion of people aged 65 and above rose from 6.2% in 2005 to 9.5% in 2025; the age dependency ratio increased from 43.1% in 2013 to 47.7% in 2024. In 2024, Vietnam had 14.2 million people aged 60 and above, projected to reach 20.9 million by 2034. Meanwhile, the total fertility rate has fallen below replacement level, dropping to 1.91 in 2024, and to just 1.51 in urban areas. This means that even as more factories open, fewer young people enter the labor market each year.

The second reason is the intense "involution" among domestic unskilled workers in Vietnam. Foreign-invested factories are expanding too fast, and provinces can no longer fill positions locally. In Bac Ninh province alone, over 230,000 new workers were needed in 2026 to meet industrial park demand. At a job fair in December last year, 30 companies wanted to hire 35,000 people, but less than 10% of positions were filled. One battery factory offered a signing bonus of 9 million VND (about $342) and recruited via TikTok livestreams, yet skilled positions still drew almost no applicants; up to 40% of new hires at some factories quit within three days.

The third reason is economic and industrial upgrading. As Vietnam's economy moves upward, more local workers are shifting to higher-skilled, higher-paying occupations, and fewer are willing to do manual labor. Since 2023, "freelancer" has consistently ranked high in search engine trends. Workers are "voting with their feet," leaving assembly lines to deliver food or set up street stalls, even without social insurance.

The fourth reason is Vietnam's own infrastructure ambitions. For example, the country's prized Long Thanh International Airport reported a shortage of about 5,500 workers in April this year, against a demand of 14,000. VinCons, the construction arm of Vietnam's largest private conglomerate Vingroup, recruited over 100,000 construction workers nationwide, offering monthly wages of 14 million to 33 million VND ($530 to $1,250) for general laborers, yet still struggled to fill positions.

Why Bangladesh?

The question is, why Bangladesh? Why doesn't Vietnam bring in workers from neighboring Cambodia or Laos?

The answer is not complicated. Bangladesh is one of the world's largest labor exporters, with about 2 million new entrants to the labor market each year, and persistently high domestic unemployment. The wages for general labor in Vietnam are already quite attractive to Bangladeshi workers. As for Cambodia and Laos, their labor flows are directed elsewhere—Thailand is the main destination for Mekong-region labor. More importantly, Vietnam has complex historical and territorial entanglements with Cambodia and Laos; large-scale import of their labor could trigger nationalist backlash at home, making it too risky. Thus, geographically distant Bangladesh becomes a "safer" choice.

But this path is not as "safe" as it seems. Many Bangladeshi workers do not enter Vietnam through legal channels; they arrive on tourist visas and then overstay illegally. By one estimate, about 6,000 Bangladeshis entered Vietnam on visas in August 2023 alone, and the actual number in the country may be higher. Vietnamese police have frequently cracked down on illegal Bangladeshi workers in recent years—Dong Nai province once deported 36 people at once, and Tay Ninh province and Ho Chi Minh City have also conducted multiple operations. These "underground" workers operate outside the legal system and thus are not counted in official foreign labor statistics. As of the end of 2025, Vietnam's official count of foreign workers stood at 163,000, of which 86.2% were skilled workers, mainly from China, South Korea, and other countries.

At the same time, Vietnam's own labor force is flowing out in large numbers. This is the most dramatic part of the whole story.

Vietnam Itself is a Major Labor Exporter

As is well known, Japan and South Korea are mired in population aging and labor shortages, and Vietnam has long become their most important source of foreign workers. As of October 2025, Japan had about 2.57 million foreign workers, of which about 606,000 were Vietnamese, accounting for 23.6% and ranking first. South Korea had over 1.1 million foreign workers as of 2025, with about 149,000 Vietnamese, the second-largest group. Vietnamese workers in Japan and South Korea also earn much higher incomes—around $1,200–1,500 per month in Japan, and $1,600–2,000 in South Korea—far above domestic factory wages. South Korea has even introduced Vietnamese skilled workers specifically in shipbuilding and other sectors, with official discussions about further expansion.

This creates a curious loop: Vietnam sends its own workers abroad to work for Japan and South Korea, while importing workers from Bangladesh to fill domestic manual labor gaps. Vietnam has become a "relay station" for labor, occupying an awkward middle position in the regional labor chain.

Even more surprising is the labor flow between China and Vietnam. Most people habitually assume "Vietnamese work in China," but official statistics show the exact opposite. Vietnamese official data shows that in the first quarter of 2024, about 36,000 Vietnamese workers went abroad in total, of which only about 170 went to mainland China, with a full-year target of just 400. The reason is simple: China has little demand for low-end foreign labor, and it is extremely difficult for Vietnamese workers to obtain Chinese work visas. Those "occasionally visible Vietnamese workers" along the China-Vietnam border are mostly border commuters or illegal workers, and are not included in Vietnam's official "contract-based labor export" statistics at all.

Conversely, the number of Chinese legally working in Vietnam exceeds 70,000, accounting for over 30% of all foreign workers in the country. Most of them are "industrial mentors" who have come to Vietnam in recent years amidst industrial relocation, bringing capital, blueprints, management experience, and supply chain connections, filling talent gaps in specific fields where Vietnam lacks domestic capacity. The labor "scissors differential" between China and Vietnam shows that, in the regional industrial chain division of labor, China remains upstream in technology and management, while Vietnam is the downstream supporting link for Chinese investment outflows.

This is the most "fantastical" aspect of Vietnam's labor market. Four completely different economic logics operate simultaneously. First, formal factories face labor shortages and import laborers from Bangladesh. Second, 65% of Vietnam's own labor force remains outside the formal economy, preferring to set up street stalls or motorcycle repair shops, even without social insurance, rather than enter factories. Third, Vietnam's most skilled industrial workers are lured away by high wages in Japan and South Korea. Fourth, the core manufacturing management positions in Vietnam are occupied by Chinese nationals. These four groups live side by side in the same land, with almost no intersection among them.

That 65% of Vietnam's informal workers is the key to understanding the social response in this country. This is also why the Vietnamese public appears quite calm about the large-scale import of foreign labor—because that 65% simply don't feel it concerns them. They don't enter factories, punch clocks, or pay social insurance; importing foreign labor affects the formal economy's employment structure and has no direct conflict with their roadside barber stalls. On the contrary, foreign workers fill positions that Vietnamese youth have "voted with their feet" to abandon, and to some extent, this is seen as an "economic necessity" rather than a threat.

A Highly Contradictory Vietnamese Job Market

By 2024, over 700,000 Vietnamese were working abroad under contract. Now the country is beginning to import workers to keep its factories and construction sites running. If one looks only at appearances, this bears a striking resemblance to South Korea's development trajectory decades ago—which is why many Vietnamese "amateur economists" on social media optimistically predict that Vietnam will become a developed country within a few decades, citing this as evidence. Indeed, in the 1970s and early 1980s, South Korea sent miners and nurses to West Germany, and over one million construction workers to the Middle East; by the late 1980s, domestic wages had risen, South Koreans gradually moved away from manual labor, and the economy shifted to labor import. Today's Vietnam seems to be following the same path.

But looking solely at the pattern of labor in-and-outflow reveals nothing substantial. For Vietnam, a more fundamental contradiction remains in its current economic structure—the problem of unsuccessful industrialization. Think about it simply: if a country has to import even general assembly-line workers to put together mobile phones, where will the engineers who design chips come from? If the top-level design of the economic model dreams of a "Korean-style" leap, but the underlying labor supply is in a "African-style" loose state, how can industrialization be realized? China accumulated the foundation for today's industrial upgrading through generations of solid effort. If Vietnam tries to skip that step and imitate South Korea directly, it may be building only "castles in the air."

Ultimately, against the global backdrop of demographic contraction, no country can stand aloof. Labor is no longer a "territorial resource" but flows like capital to find value troughs around the world for "arbitrage." Vietnam happens to be caught in the middle of this global labor "arbitrage chain," acting as both seller and buyer, both exporter and importer. This is its fantastical reality, but it is also its reality. Yet this reality probably should not be viewed only optimistically; it may more reflect Vietnam's disadvantaged position in the current global economic geography and the helpless choices of its job market.