Working hours and overtime in Vietnam

What are the normal working hours in Vietnam?

Normal working time in Vietnam is capped at 8 hours a day and 48 hours a week, and the State encourages a 40-hour week. Where hours are organised weekly rather than daily, a normal working day can run to 10 hours, but the 48-hour weekly ceiling still holds.1 Anything beyond these limits is overtime, with its own consent requirement, caps and premium pay. These are the baseline figures behind every contract and payslip; they sit within Vietnam's labour law and employment contracts and the statutory leave and benefits an employer funds alongside them.

What is the overtime limit in Vietnam?

Overtime in Vietnam requires the employee's agreement — an employer cannot simply order it — and it is capped by day, month and year. On any single day it may not exceed 50% of the normal daily hours, so an 8-hour day can stretch to a 12-hour total. The monthly cap is 40 hours. The annual ceiling is 200 hours, rising to 300 hours only in specified sectors such as textiles, garments and footwear, electronics and agro-forestry-aquaculture processing, plus a short list of other cases in Decree 145/2020.12 Those are the sectors a China+1 manufacturing move most often enters, which is why the higher ceiling matters there — see China+1 manufacturing teams in Vietnam.

One narrow exception applies: in genuine emergencies — defence or security mobilisation, or protecting life and property during disasters, fires or epidemics — an employer may require overtime beyond the ordinary caps and the employee may not decline (Labour Code Art. 108).1

How is overtime paid in Vietnam?

Overtime is paid as a multiple of the employee's normal hourly wage, and the multiplier depends on which kind of day it falls on: the statutory minimums are 150% on a normal working day, 200% on a weekly rest day and 300% on a public holiday or paid-leave day. On a public holiday the 300% is paid on top of the day's own holiday wage, not instead of it.1 From 2026 Vietnam has 12 paid public holidays a year — the 11 in the Labour Code plus Vietnam Culture Day on 24 November, added by Resolution 28/2026/QH16 — so the top rate recurs on a predictable calendar; see Vietnam's public holidays for 2026 and 2027.13

What is the night-shift premium in Vietnam?

Work performed at night — defined as 10pm to 6am — carries a premium of at least 30% above the normal day wage, so a regular night hour is paid at 130%. When an hour is both overtime and at night, a further uplift of at least 20% applies and the three elements stack.1 Decree 145/2020 fixes how they combine: an overtime hour worked at night reaches a minimum of 200% on a normal working day (210% where daytime overtime preceded it), 270% on a weekly rest day and 390% on a public holiday.2 These stacked figures are where many summaries round off, and they matter most to employers running shifts around the clock.

What rest breaks and weekly rest are required?

Hours are only half the picture; the Labour Code also requires rest. Anyone working at least 6 hours in a day is entitled to a rest break of at least 30 minutes (at least 45 minutes on a night shift), and for a continuous shift of 6 hours or more that break counts as working time.1 Shift workers must get at least 12 hours of rest before the next shift,1 and every employee is entitled to at least 24 consecutive hours of weekly rest — or, where the work cycle prevents a weekly day off, at least four days off a month on average; if the weekly rest day falls on a public holiday, a compensatory day off follows.1 (These rest rules are Articles 109 to 111; Article 108, cited above, is the separate emergency-overtime provision.)

What does this cost a 24/7 roster?

For a contact centre, a continuous-shift factory or any round-the-clock operation the premiums compound fast, because a single hour can trigger the overtime multiplier, the night premium and the night-overtime uplift at once. The example below takes an illustrative normal hourly wage of ₫50,000 to show what the same hour costs across the roster.

Two planning points follow. Rostering overtime onto rest days, nights and holidays is lawful but expensive, so the cheapest compliant roster usually spreads load across more headcount rather than longer hours. And the annual ceiling is a hard limit — a team that leans on 300%-rate holiday hours can reach the 200-hour cap well before year-end. Sectors that staff queues and night lines feel this most; see BPO and call-centre hiring in Vietnam. Overtime is charged on the actual wage, which must itself clear the regional minimum wage. For the wider set, browse our Vietnam employer guides.

How does EOR Vietnam keep hours and overtime compliant?

As the legal employer behind our employer-of-record service in Vietnam, EOR Vietnam carries the working-time duties for the people we hire on your behalf. We put the normal 8-hour day and 48-hour week into each labour contract, record overtime with the employee's written agreement, track it against the 40-hour monthly and 200- or 300-hour annual caps, and apply the correct 150/200/300% and night premiums on every payslip — part of running compliant Vietnam payroll and the statutory employer costs.

Our service fee does not move with any of this: it is a flat US$149 per employee per month for a Vietnamese national, the same fee regardless of salary, role, location in Vietnam, headcount or how many overtime hours a month runs (as of October 2026). Foreign nationals who need a Vietnamese work permit are quoted separately. There are no setup, onboarding, offboarding, contract or payslip fees, and no hidden fees. Overtime and night premiums are an employment cost, not our fee, so they are passed through at cost alongside gross salary and the statutory employer contributions; a refundable security deposit equal to two months of the employee's employment cost is held for the engagement and returned at the end, less any unpaid amounts. See what an EOR actually costs in Vietnam, or request a costed quote.