960 Thousand People Still Unemployed Since The Beginning Of The 2020 Pandemic

JAKARTA - The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) released data that there are still hundreds of thousands of people who have not found work since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In fact, the Head of PBS Margo Yuwono said that this number had almost touched the number of one million people.

"Those who used to be affected by COVID-19 and are still unemployed are approximately 960.000 people," he said during a press conference via online channels on Monday, May 9.

According to Margo, the number of unemployed in February 2022 was 8.4 million people or much higher than the February 2020 period of 6.93 million people. Meanwhile, the peak of this figure occurred in February 2021 with a record 8.75 million unemployed people.

"However, in February 2022 compared to February 2021, the impact of COVID-19 from working age has decreased by 7.57 million people from 19.10 million last year to 11.53 million this year," he said.

In general, Margo explained that currently Indonesia's employment structure is filled with 208.54 million people of working age. Of this number, 144.01 million people are in the workforce with 135.61 million people working and 8.4 million people unemployed.

Meanwhile, another 64.53 million people from the working age population are not in the labor force.

"During February 2021 - February 2022, around 1.86 million people were absorbed in the agricultural business sector, while the workforce absorbed in the manufacturing and trading industries was around 850.000 and 640.000 workers, respectively," he continued.