An HR and payroll officer at a mid-sized Vietnamese company is, by now, probably maintaining two different lists on the same spreadsheet: who pays social insurance, and who pays unemployment insurance. The two lists used to be almost identical, so nobody paid attention. That is no longer true.
Social Insurance Law 41/2024/QH15 took effect on 1 July 2025. It has 11 chapters and 141 articles and replaces the 2014 law1,2. Employment Law 74/2025/QH15, in force since 1 January 2026, governs unemployment insurance. The two laws widened coverage in different directions, and where they overlap is where mistakes happen.
Four new groups under the Social Insurance Law
According to Vietnam Social Security's own summary, the law adds four groups to compulsory social insurance1:
- Owners of registered household businesses.
- Part-time commune, village and neighbourhood officials.
- Part-time workers.
- Company managers, controllers and cooperative executives who do not draw a salary.
Read that last group carefully. Compulsory social insurance now covers managers who are not salaried, while unemployment insurance under the 2025 Employment Law covers managers who are salaried. For the same job title, the two laws ask different questions, and the answer decides which list the person belongs on.
Pensions: the 15-year mark and what to tell employees
The most discussed change is the pension condition: the minimum contribution period falls from 20 years to 15, for both compulsory and voluntary participants1. Retirement age still follows the existing schedule; only the contribution requirement is shorter.
For HR, this belongs in the internal FAQ, especially for people who started contributing late or have gaps. Someone who began contributing at 45 previously had almost no path to a pension. Now they do.
The law also adds a state-budget social pension allowance for people aged 75 and over with no pension or monthly social insurance benefit, and for those aged 70 to 74 in poor and near-poor households3.
Late payment and evasion are no longer the same thing
One change gets less attention but bears directly on legal risk: the law devotes a chapter to contribution collection, defining what counts as late payment and what counts as evasion, and how each is handled1.
The two were previously blurred, and the fuzzy boundary made enforcement inconsistent. With the line drawn, a company that pays late because of cash flow and a company that deliberately fails to declare its workers are no longer treated the same way.
The law also introduces a "reference level" for calculating certain contributions and benefits in place of anchoring to the base salary; until the base salary is abolished, the reference level equals it1. That is a technical detail, but it runs through every payroll formula.
What HR has to do
Most errors here are not deliberate avoidance. They come from a list drawn up years ago that nobody has re-checked against two new laws. The groups most often missed remain part-timers and people holding management titles who are paid in a way that differs from ordinary staff.
Three places in payroll that have to change
The law's effects do not stop at who participates. They run straight into the formulas HR uses every month.
The first is the reference level. Every formula anchored to the base salary needs checking against the new concept, including the internal allowance spreadsheets that accountants build themselves.
The second is household business owners. Many companies work with household businesses as agents, service providers or subcontractors. Owners of registered household businesses are now covered in their own right. That creates no obligation for the contracting company, but it changes the other side's costs and belongs in the next contract negotiation.
The third is electronic filing. The law adds provisions on electronic transactions in social insurance and simplifies procedures. If a company is still filing the old way, this is the moment to switch, because the labour registration duty under the Employment Law travels along the same data route.
