Although the impact was less dramatic than in other Asian countries, Vietnam has been
affected by the international crisis which started in 2008, resulting in a significant slowdown
of economic growth. This paper aims at assessing the impact of this economic crisis on
employment, unemployment and the informal sector. Contrarily to previous studies on this
subject, we anticipate a very small increase of unemployment. According to our estimates,
most of the impact of the crisis in terms of employment will actually be felt in the informal
sector, where most new entrants on the labour market and laid(off workers will end up
working. This feature will result in an urgent need to put in place specific policies to tackle
informal sector low productivity and its manpower’s lack of labour protection.