Vietnam
Labor administrative requirements and unemployment insurance changes
Impact date: 1 January 2026 A new law for the first time requires both employers and employees to register and update labor registration information when registering or adjusting information on employees’ social insurance (“SI”) participation. It also continues to stipulate the four unemployment insurance (“UI”) regimes similar to those under the current law, but more clearly defined, and expands the benefits for both employees and employers.
Employer implications/action needed Employers must collect employees’ mandatory information to perform the labor registration and to prepare and submit applications for expanded UI participant categories, including:
- Persons working under indefinite-term employment contracts (“ECs”) or definite term ECs with a term of one month or more
- Part-time employees working under the above-mentioned ECs with monthly salaries equal to or above the lowest salary level used as the basis for payment of compulsory SI contributions as stipulated by SI Law
- Enterprise managers, controllers, representatives of capital contribution portions of enterprises as prescribed by law
Employer risk Non-compliance or inaccurate reporting of labor information may lead to penalties, inspections, or reputational damage. Employers who fail to contribute to UI must compensate workers directly for missed benefits.
Change to minimum regional wage at commune-level
Impact date: 1 January 2026 After the arrangement of administrative boundaries of provinces and centrally-run cities, the Government issued Decree 293/2025/ND-CP dated 10 November 2025 providing regulations on minimum wage levels for employees working under employment contracts. Specifically: (a) Regional monthly minimum wage: Region I: VND5,310,000, Region II: VND 4,730,000; Region III: VND 4,140,000; Region IV: VND 3,700,000; (b) Hourly minimum wage: Region I: VND25,500/hour; Region II: VND 22,700; Region III: VND 20,000; Region IV: VND 17,800. Consequently, some areas might be subject to a new regional minimum wage level.
Employer implications/action needed If the employer is located in an area with a new regional minimum wage level, it must check and make necessary amendments to wages and scales contained in internal working rules, payroll, labor collective agreements (if any), and employment contracts, to ensure that all employees’ wages comply with the new region-based minimum wage.
Employer risk An employer paying their employees’ salaries which are lower than the statutory minimum wages announced by the Government may be subject to the following penalties:
- A fine ranging from VND 20,000,000 to VND 75,000,000 depending on the number of impacted employees
- Remedial measure: Compelled payment to impacted employees of full salaries plus interest on late payments or insufficient payments of salary, which are calculated at the highest rate of the demand deposit interest rates publicly quoted by state-owned commercial banks on the date of penalty imposition
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Protection of personal data
Impact date: 1 January 2026 Under a new law aimed at protecting personal data in employment:
- information received by employers as part of recruitment processes must be necessary for the recruitment purposes, processed with applicants’ consent, and be deleted or destroyed where applicants are unsuccessful, unless otherwise agreed
- employers’ storage of their employees’ personal data on cloud computing services are exempt from conducting an impact assessment on the cross-border transfer of personal data
- an employee’s personal data must be deleted or destroyed upon termination of their employment contract, unless otherwise agreed or prescribed by law
- technological or technical measures collecting employees’ personal data processed for the purpose of employment management must be lawful and clearly disclosed to the employees
Employer implications/action needed Employers should review HR processes to ensure lawful data collection, including obtaining explicit employee consent where required, and preparing or updating data deletion protocols.
Employer risk The new law introduces strict compliance obligations and significant penalties. The maximum fine the unlawful cross-border transfer of personal data is 5% of the organization’s revenue in the preceding year, with exceptions. For other breaches, the maximum fine is VND 3,000,000,000.
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