Vietnamese workers spend 4.5 months of wages to secure jobs abroad

Vietnamese workers spent an average of VND125.7 million (US$4,835) in 2025 to take up jobs abroad, equivalent to 4.5 months of their first overseas income, and more than half of them had to borrow money to cover it.

Costs have fallen 23.8% from VND164.9 million ($6,340) in 2021, according to analysis released Sept. 8 by the National Statistics Office with technical support from the International Organization for Migration.

Average first-month income abroad rose 25.4% over the same period, from VND22.4 million ($860) to VND28.1 million ($1,080).

Nguyen Thi Ngoc Lan of the office's Population and Labor Statistics Division said a first month's wage abroad runs 3.3 times the average income of a worker at home, which is VND8.5 million ($327).

Payments to recruitment companies and individual brokers take 52.8% of what a worker spends, an average of VND94.5 million ($3,635) among those who paid them.

Training and document preparation account for 33.7%, travel 11.1% and other expenses 2.3%.

Three markets: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, which together take 76.7% of Vietnamese workers going abroad, carry the highest costs.

Workers heading to Japan paid an average of VND140.8 million ($5,415) in 2025, those going to South Korea VND139.4 million ($5,360) and those to Taiwan VND130.2 million ($5,010). Other destinations averaged nearly VND86 million ($3,310).

Lan said costs climb as education levels fall, with one group paying as much as VND155.6 million ($5,985).

By skill level, medium-skilled workers paid around VND143 million ($5,500), low-skilled workers VND109 million ($4,190) and high-skilled workers just under VND68 million ($2,615).

Workers typically spend about six months preparing before departure, and around seven months for those bound for Japan and South Korea. Some 53.9% of those surveyed borrowed to cover the fees.

The statistics office cautioned that this part of the study, which drew on 3,596 migrant workers across six provinces and cities, used non-probability sampling and does not represent all Vietnamese workers abroad.

Workers prepare to sit the Korean language test for manufacturing jobs in Hanoi, Vietnam, May 2024. Photo by VnExpress/Hong Chieu

Elementary occupations account for 33% of Vietnamese working abroad, craft and related trades about 24%, and machine and equipment operation 16%.

Workers with a college diploma or higher earn an average of VND42.6 million ($1,640) in their first month, those with elementary or intermediate vocational training VND27.6 million ($1,060), high school graduates VND26 million ($1,000) and lower secondary graduates about VND22 million ($845).

Costs have fallen from previous years but remain high, Lan said, given that most workers going abroad come from rural areas and more than half must borrow.

She said regulators need to keep pushing costs down, make fees transparent and control informal charges, while raising workers' skill levels and helping them find work when they return.

Nguyen Hai Ly, deputy head of the legal affairs division at the Department of Overseas Labor under the Ministry of Home Affairs, said recruitment and brokerage fees still make up a large share of what workers pay, with most of the excess arising from informal intermediaries who operate before a worker reaches a licensed company.

He credited the decline in costs to the 2020 Law on Vietnamese Guest Workers. It abolished brokerage fees charged to workers and shifted them onto companies, and capped service fees at one month's salary for each year of a contract.

An amendment to that law, passed by the National Assembly on Aug. 24 and taking effect March 1, 2027, further tightens the ceiling on charges collected outside service fees and stiffens penalties for companies that break the rules.

It also caps the wait between selection and departure at 180 days, obliging companies that miss the deadline to compensate workers and refund what they paid.

The Department of Overseas Labor said it will use bilateral negotiations to push foreign partners and employers to share recruitment costs, airfares and training, moving step by step toward a model in which workers pay no recruitment fees at all.

Data on returning workers will also be integrated into the employment services system to connect them with employers, particularly foreign-invested firms from the markets where those workers were previously posted.