Social Insurance in Vietnam: Rates and Rules for Expats (2026)

If you hold a fixed-term labour contract of 12 months or more with a Vietnam-based employer, you must join compulsory social and health insurance. You pay 8% of your contribution salary into the pension fund, alongside one-third of the 4.5% health insurance contribution.

If you work on a fixed-term labour contract of 12 months or more with a Vietnam-based employer, you must join compulsory social insurance. Three exceptions apply, and compulsory health insurance follows the same rule.

Your employer deducts your 8% contribution for the pension-and-survivor fund every month. Compulsory health insurance takes 4.5% of that salary, and you pay one-third of it.

Who must join compulsory social insurance

A foreign employee is a mandatory participant in compulsory social insurance when working under a fixed-term labour contract of 12 months or more with an employer based in Vietnam. The foreign-employee rule names no other kind of contract, so a contract under 12 months, or one with an overseas employer, does not meet that test. The exceptions are listed below.

Separately, to work in Vietnam you must hold a work permit issued by the competent Vietnamese state agency, except in the cases listed under Labor Code Article 154. For tax, see Vietnam’s tax residency rules.

Three exceptions apply:

• An intra-company transferee, as defined under the regulations on foreign workers working in Vietnam, is not a mandatory participant.
• Someone who has already reached retirement age under Labor Code Article 169 clause 2 at the time the labour contract is signed is not a mandatory participant.
• A case covered by an international treaty that Vietnam is a party to, where that treaty provides otherwise, is not a mandatory participant.

A probation contract under labour law does not make you a mandatory participant either.

The retirement-age exception turns on your age on the day you sign the contract. In normal working conditions, the retirement age was 60 years 3 months for men and 55 years 4 months for women in 2021. It then rises by 3 months a year for men and 4 months a year for women, reaching 62 for men in 2028 and 60 for women in 2035.

For the other two exceptions, the law points to other regulations and to treaties instead of spelling them out. Ask your employer’s HR before you assume you’re exempt.

Contribution rates: what you pay and what your employer pays

A foreign employee pays 8% of contribution salary into the pension-and-survivor fund, and one-third of the 4.5% health-insurance contribution. The employer pays the rest, listed below.

Pension and survivor fund. Each month, you pay 8% of your contribution salary into the pension-and-survivor fund. Your employer pays a further 14% of the same salary into the same fund.

Sickness and maternity fund. Your employer pays 3% of the contribution salary into this fund.

Occupational accident and disease insurance. If the 12-month contract rule above applies to you, you’re a mandatory participant. The rules are Section 3 of the Law on Occupational Safety and Hygiene and Decree 88/2020/NĐ-CP, as amended by Decree 158/2025/NĐ-CP. Your employer pays 0.5% of the contribution salary into this fund, or 0.3% if the enterprise meets the conditions in Article 5 of Decree 58/2020/NĐ-CP.

Health insurance. The same 12-month contract test that applies to social insurance also makes you a mandatory health-insurance participant, with the same intra-company-transferee, retirement-age and treaty exceptions. The monthly contribution is 4.5% of the salary used as the basis for compulsory social insurance: your employer pays two-thirds of that amount and you pay one-third.

Unemployment insurance

Unemployment insurance under the Employment Law covers the “workers” it names. A “worker” is a Vietnamese citizen aged 15 or over who is able to work and needs work. Foreign employees are not among those named.

The Standing Committee of the National Assembly decides whether other groups with steady work and income join. If your payslip shows an unemployment-insurance line, ask your employer’s HR what it is for.

The salary your contributions are based on

For an employee whose pay is decided by the employer, the contribution salary is the monthly salary. It includes the wage for the job or title, wage allowances and other supplements agreed to be paid regularly and stably in each pay period.

Wage allowances count when they are agreed in the labour contract and compensate for working conditions, job complexity, living conditions or labour attraction. Other supplements must also be agreed in the labour contract, be a set amount, and be paid regularly and stably. Allowances and supplements that depend on or vary with productivity, work process or work quality are left out.

If your salary is paid in a foreign currency, it is converted into dong using the average transfer buying rate of 4 state-owned commercial banks. The rate is taken at the end of 2 January for the first 6 months and 1 July for the last 6 months. If either date is a holiday or day off, the next working day’s rate applies.

In a month with 14 or more working days of unpaid leave, you do not pay social insurance for that month. The exception is an agreement with your employer to pay on the most recent month’s contribution salary.

The contribution salary can be no lower than the reference level and no higher than 20 times the reference level at the time of payment. The reference level is an amount of money decided by the Government. It’s used to calculate contribution and benefit levels for a number of social-insurance schemes under the Law on Social Insurance.

For as long as the base salary has not been abolished, the reference level equals the base salary. The base salary is VND 2,530,000 a month from 1 July 2026. At that figure, the cap on your contribution salary is 20 times VND 2,530,000 a month.

Claiming a one-time social-insurance payment

If you stop participating in social insurance and apply, you’re entitled to a one-time social-insurance payment in one of the following cases:

• Your labour contract ends, or your work permit, practising certificate or practising licence expires and is not renewed.
• You’re eligible for a pension under the regulations but do not continue residing in Vietnam, in which case you can claim the one-time payment.
• You’ve reached retirement age but have fewer than 15 years of social-insurance contributions.
• You have one of the listed serious illnesses: cancer, paralysis, decompensated cirrhosis, severe tuberculosis, or AIDS.
• Your work-capacity reduction is 81% or more, or you’re a person with an especially severe disability.

On the contract-end, serious-illness and work-capacity grounds, if you also qualify for a pension, you choose between the monthly pension and the one-time payment.

The payment is calculated per year of contributions: for each year from 2014 onward, 2 months of your average monthly contribution salary. For a period of contributions shorter than one year, it is the amount paid in, up to 2 months of that average.

Your employer’s obligations, and the penalty for not paying

Your employer must register your compulsory social-insurance participation and pay compulsory social insurance on your behalf. It deducts your own share from your wages and pays it into the fund together with its own share.

Decree 283/2026/NĐ-CP sets the fines. An employer that commits one of the late-payment acts it defines is fined 12% to 15% of the total amount paid late, up to VND 75,000,000. For an act of evading payment it defines, the fine is 18% to 20% of the total amount evaded, up to VND 75,000,000.

Employers include enterprises, other organisations and individuals that hire under labour contracts. The amounts above are the fine for an individual employer. For an organisation the fine is 2 times the individual fine, so the maximum is twice VND 75,000,000.

Which decree governs this today

Decree 158/2025/NĐ-CP took effect on 1 July 2025. From that date, the decree that specifically governed compulsory social insurance for foreign employees ceased to have effect. An earlier decree that had detailed a number of articles of the Law on Social Insurance on compulsory social insurance also ceased to have effect.

Thinking of buying a home here? See buying an apartment in Da Nang as a foreigner. For more on managing money in Vietnam, see the money guide.

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General information checked against the sources listed above, not legal advice for your situation. Rules and office practice change; confirm with the immigration office or a licensed adviser before you act. See how guides are checked.

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