After the reunification of the North and South Vietnam in 1975, the communist government implemented a series of socialist economic policies, collectivizing production and prohibiting private enterprises. Such policies that lasted for ten years during 1975-1986 were proven disastrous, as they dramatically reduced agricultural output and incentivized child labor. In this paper, we show that Vietnamese children who were of school age during the collectivist reform era have worse labor market outcomes in adulthood. In addition, the "unlucky effects" are mainly concentrated on men. We exploit regional variation in export growth after Vietnam's trade liberalization in the 2000s. In particular, we find that while a region's export growth has overall positive effects on the labor market outcomes (e.g. employment in the formal sector, non-agriculture sector and earnings) of its residents, the cohorts who were of school age during 1975-1986 do not gain as much as they would have otherwise from the same export shock, illustrating the long-term labor market costs of growing up in adverse economic conditions following the end of the Vietnam War.