Indonesia Sees Decline in Unemployment Numbers

Jakarta – Unemployment numbers in Indonesia experienced a decrease in the last 6 months. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Indonesia’s unemployment number skyrocketed by August 2020 to 9.7 million people. By February 2021, the government was able to reduce that number to 950,000 people.

According to data by Statistics Indonesia (BPS), the number of people of working age in Indonesia reached 205.36 million. From that amount, up to 139.81 million, or 68.08%, are part of the active workforce. Up to 131.06 million, or 93.74%, of that number are employed while 8.75 million people, or 6.26% are unemployed.

As much as 59.62% are informal workers and most of them have a maximum education of primary school or below (40.38%). However, the largest unemployment numbers were from those graduated from vocational schools (SMK) with 11.45%, followed by high-school graduates (8.55%), university graduates (6.97%) and diploma graduates (6.61%). Meanwhile the unemployment rate of those with only a middle school education was only 5.87% and primary school education graduates only 3.13%.

The Manpower Ministry (Kemnaker) is implementing steps to bridge the gap between industry requirements and worker competency by providing link and match programs, as well as revamping worker training centres (BLK). Two particular Kemnaker policies to handle this mismatch for the 2020-2024 period includes completely revamping BLKs into focusing on being competency and productivity development centres that are able to produce workers who are able to compete in the national and international levels.

“The transformation of BLKs will be done through reforming the institutions to increase the quality of BLK education. We will optimize the training capacities of UPTP, UPTD and community BLKs for 483,991 people per year, which can benefit the job market,” Manpower Minister Ida Fauziyah said in a written statement on Monday (24/5).

The second Kemnaker policy is through employment link and match programs with the aim to improve the integration of training, certification and worker placement through a complete and effective business process to bring together job seekers with the demands of the job market.

“We will implement strategies to integrate training, certification and worker placement programs by developing partnerships with the business world and the industrial sector,” Minister Ida said.

In order to support competency certification of vocational education and training graduates, there will also be 1,925 professional certification institutions (LSP) that have obtained licenses from the professional certification agency (BNSP) who are ready to certify workers across Indonesia.