Vietnam’s rapidly growing digital economy is creating unprecedented employment opportunities, but the vast majority of platform workers remain outside the national social safety net.
This stark paradox was the central focus of an international conference titled “Employment and Social Protection for Digital Platform Workers in Vietnam,” co-hosted by Vietnam Social Security (VSS) and the World Bank (WB) on September 22 in Hanoi.
The boom in ride-hailing, food delivery, and e-commerce platforms is fundamentally reshaping the national labor market.
According to Mr. Christopher Sheldon, World Bank Operations Manager for Vietnam, Cambodia, and Lao PDR, digital platforms currently generate around two million jobs across the country.
A recent World Bank survey of nearly 5,000 digital platform workers in Vietnam revealed that while over 90 percent rely on gig work as their primary source of income, only 20 percent are covered by social insurance. Despite low coverage, worker awareness of occupational risks is high. Most survey respondents expressed a desire for protection against illness and workplace accidents, as well as retirement income, stating a willingness to contribute to social security if policies are flexible and accessible.
However, integrating gig workers into the formal welfare system presents significant structural challenges. Digital platform employment is characterized by high fluidity: individuals frequently work across multiple applications simultaneously, hold part-time gigs, or alternate between traditional and platform jobs. Fluctuation in workload and market demand creates irregular income streams, while ambiguous employment relationships between platforms and workers complicate formal classification under standard labor laws.
Speaking at the conference, Mr. Tran Dinh Lieu, Deputy Director General of VSS, emphasized that expanding social security coverage to all workers remains a top priority. Recent legislative reforms, notably the 2024 Social Insurance Law and its guiding regulations, have expanded mandatory participation categories and added financial incentives to encourage coverage.
As a result, national social insurance enrollment reached over 21.5 million people in 2025, representing 45.1 percent of the total labor force. By August 2026, participation climbed to more than 22.4 million people, or 46.7 percent of the workforce. Nevertheless, the VSS leader acknowledged that non-traditional employment models require novel mechanisms regarding wage definitions, contribution calculations, and administrative procedures.
To address these hurdles, international experts shared policy models implemented across the region. WB representatives presented successful social security adaptations from Indonesia, while regional corporate leaders, including Mr. Brendan Chia, Head of Regional Public Affairs and Policy at Grab Singapore, and Mr. Joseph Han, Senior Research Fellow at the Korea Development Institute (KDI), offered private-sector perspectives on managing safety net funds within the digital economy.
Delegates agreed that future policy development should focus on flexible contribution rates based on real-time earnings, seamless benefit portability across jobs, and shared contribution mechanisms involving workers, platform companies, and the state. Experts also recommended leveraging platform data to verify worker income and streamline contribution processing.
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