Compared to their regional counterparts, Vietnam’s recent graduates are unhappiest at their current jobs.
In a survey by JobStreet and jobsDB, recent graduates in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam rated their level of happiness at their current job. According to JobStreet, the index rating was based on scores from a scale of zero to 10, with zero being unhappy, five being neutral and 10 being extremely happy.
Vietnamese respondents scored the lowest on this spectrum at 4.9, however the country’s young workers were also among the most optimistic when it came to their expectations over the next six months, scoring a 6.5 for their outlook on the future.
Infographic via JobStreet.
Looking forward, recent Vietnamese grads said a higher salary or a new job would go a long way to enhancing their job satisfaction, two responses that were relatively common among other young regional workers.
For JobStreet’s part, the findings raised an important question. “It would be totally understandable for someone who’s been in the same job for 5 years, but for fresh grads to be feeling this way is a major cause for concern,” wrote the online employment marketplace. “If fresh grads are looking to jump ship for higher pay, does that mean they’re being underpaid to begin with, or that they’re expecting too much?”
Infographic via JobStreet.
On the one hand, JobStreet reports that recent salaries increases are “out of synch with inflation, resulting in lower increase in real terms”, however the website also noted that fresh graduates however should be prepared for higher expectations from employers as competition becomes fiercer.
While salaries were an important part of job satisfaction across the region, recent Vietnamese grads also placed “further education” highest on their list of ways to improve job satisfaction, reports VN Economic Times.
Infographic via JobStreet.
Outside of Vietnam, recent Filipino graduates were the happiest at their jobs with a score of 6.5, while their Indonesian counterparts reported the greatest optimism about the near future, scoring 6.8.
[Photo via Vietnam National University, Hanoi]
