Reeracoen Vietnam has released the Vietnam Employer Hiring Study 2026, a comprehensive new study surveying employers across Vietnam’s key industries and company types. The findings paint a picture of a market defined by ambition and constraint in equal measure.
Vietnam’s economy continues to attract significant foreign direct investment, and employer confidence is strong. Yet beneath the surface, a set of structural tensions is making talent acquisition increasingly difficult and increasingly expensive.
Hiring is growing, but budgets are not keeping pace
69% of employers expect to increase hiring activity in 2026, with 14% anticipating significant growth. Yet only 43% plan to increase their recruitment budget. This “Efficiency Paradox”, where hiring demand is rising but resources remain flat, will force companies to fundamentally rethink how they source and select candidates.
Salary inflation is the defining pressure of 2026
86% of employers cite rising salary expectations as their top hiring challenge, more than any other factor by a wide margin. At the same time, 84% expect to raise salaries for new hires, and 33% name salary competition as their biggest employee retention risk. Wage inflation is simultaneously making hiring more expensive and making retention harder.
A critical vacuum at the mid-level
The study identifies a structural talent gap that Reeracoen describes as the “Mid-Level Talent Vacuum”: 39% of employers struggle to find mid-level managers, and the hardest-to-fill roles, manufacturing engineers (35%), sales and business development professionals (35%), and factory supervisors (33%) – are all experienced, specialist positions. Vietnam’s talent pipeline produces graduates; it does not yet reliably produce the next layer of leadership above them.
Digital skills are the workforce gap employers fear most
73% of respondents identified digital and AI-related skills as the most critical upskilling priority for Vietnam’s workforce, far ahead of leadership development (51%) and English communication (37%). As AI tools become embedded in manufacturing, logistics and commercial operations, employers across all sectors are demanding capabilities that the current talent pool cannot yet consistently deliver.
“Vietnam’s hiring market in 2026 is not a market in difficulty,” says Masato Sekine, Country Manager, Reeracoen Vietnam. “It is a market in transition.
“The employers who will win are those who move decisively: on compensation, on talent development, and on the quality of their recruitment partnerships. The data makes clear that doing more of the same will not be enough.”
“Across Asia-Pacific, we are seeing similar patterns emerge, hiring demand remains strong, but execution is becoming the defining challenge,” says Kenji Naito, Group Chief Executive Officer, Reeracoen Group.
“Vietnam is one of the most dynamic markets in the region, and the ability to attract and retain talent will be a key differentiator for companies operating here.”
What this means for the market
Looking ahead, the study points to five structural trends that will shape Vietnam’s talent landscape over the next 12-24 months:
- Recruitment efficiency will become a competitive advantage. Companies that reduce time-to-hire and improve shortlisting precision will consistently outperform those relying on reactive, high-volume approaches.
- Compensation benchmarking will move from annual exercise to continuous practice. In a market where salary expectations can shift within a quarter, companies that lack real-time market data will lose candidates at offer stage and lose employees to counter-offers.
- The mid-level management gap will worsen before it improves. Without deliberate investment in internal leadership development, companies will compete for an increasingly scarce and expensive pool of experienced managers.
- Digital fluency will become a baseline hiring criterion across all sectors, not just technology companies. Candidates who cannot demonstrate foundational digital skills will find themselves at a growing disadvantage.
- Recruitment partnerships will deepen or disappear. 80% of employers want faster shortlisting and 69% want salary benchmarking from their recruitment partners. Agencies that cannot deliver both will be replaced by those that can.
