Picture a seafood processing plant in Can Tho during peak season. It signs one-month contracts with a few dozen seasonal workers, as it has for years. Under the 2013 Employment Law those workers were outside unemployment insurance, because the threshold was a contract of three months or more.
From 1 January 2026 that threshold is gone. Employment Law 74/2025/QH15 brings workers on fixed-term contracts of one month or more into compulsory unemployment insurance1,2.
The law adds an important sentence: the rule applies even if the two parties call the document something else, as long as its content shows paid work performed under the management, direction and supervision of one party2. Renaming it a "collaborator agreement" does not remove the obligation.
Three newly covered groups
Beyond the one-month threshold, Article 31 brings in two further groups2:
- Part-time workers, where monthly pay equals or exceeds the lowest wage used as the basis for compulsory social insurance contributions. This is the first time part-timers are covered explicitly.
- Salaried managers of enterprises and cooperatives: controllers, representatives of state or company capital, board members, general directors, cooperative directors and equivalent positions.
For many companies the second group is the easiest to miss, because executive payroll is usually handled separately from staff payroll.
What employees get differently
On the benefits side, four changes stand out3:
Benefit entitlement now starts from the 11th working day after a complete application is filed, rather than the 16th.
The monthly rate is still 60 percent of the average insured wage over the last six months, but the cap is unified for everyone: no more than five times the regional minimum wage at the time the contract ends. The old law used different caps for the public sector and for enterprises.
The "vocational training support" benefit becomes support for workers taking training to raise their skill level, and now includes a meal allowance during training alongside tuition.
For employers, the conditions for claiming training support to maintain employment have been relaxed: the requirement to prove a lack of funds is gone, and the qualifying situations are spelled out more clearly, covering restructuring or technology change for economic reasons, natural disaster, fire, hostilities, dangerous epidemics, or a state-ordered relocation or downsizing of premises.
The new duty: labour registration
The part least discussed, but which creates the most work for HR, is labour registration. From 1 July 2026, for employees covered by compulsory social insurance, employers register employee information at the same time as the social insurance registration or adjustment filing, under Decree 318/2025/ND-CP4. Remaining groups follow later under the decree's timetable.
The process has three steps: the employee provides their information and is responsible for its accuracy; the employer files it together with the social insurance paperwork; the social insurance agency receives it and syncs it into the national labour database4.
Penalties already exist. Under Decree 283/2026/ND-CP, an employee who fails to provide information or provides wrong information faces 1 to 2 million dong. An employer that fails to register or update is fined by headcount affected: 10 to 20 million dong for 1 to 50 people, 20 to 30 million for 51 to 100, and 30 to 40 million for 101 or more, plus an order to complete the registration4.
What to do this month
Most of the risk is not deliberate avoidance. It is that the contribution list was built last year and nobody has re-checked it against the new thresholds. The three groups most often missed are short-contract seasonal workers, part-timers, and the executive team itself.
