Developing High-Quality Human Resources in a Knowledge-Based Economy: A Study in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

For decades, Vietnam has been concerned about the need to improve human capital to meet the demands of a knowledge-based economy. The analysis of the country’s current situation of human resources in terms of structure, quantity, and the quality shows that Vietnam’s human resources are under-qualified compared with other countries in Southeast Asia, such as Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. This poses significant challenges to the economy because the development of human resources is always an urgent requirement for a new economy with fast growth, like in the Vietnamese economy. To attract foreign investment capital and develop more strongly, human resources in Vietnam must have progressed in both quality and quantity. Therefore, the author conducts this study to find out the factors that directly affect the quality of human resources, thereby evaluating and offering appropriate solutions to improve the quality of current human resources in Vietnam. More specifically, through quantitative analysis and survey with data about 4000 employees in Ho Chi Minh City, the author has discovered that there are four important factors that make the difference in labor quality, which are age, gender, marital status, and education level of the workers.