Millions Of Unemployed Undergraduates, Speaker Of The House Of Representatives Asks To Cross The Ministry Of Facilitation Of Job Applicants

JAKARTA - The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Puan Maharani, highlighted the number of undergraduate-educated unemployed in Indonesia, which has exceeded 1,010,652 people by 2025.

Puan asked the government through across ministries to facilitate higher education graduates in finding jobs.

For example, said Puan, by establishing a National Skill Development Center (National Skills Centers) in various strategic areas of Indonesia, as a place for retraining and continued training (upskilling) to bridge the skills gap between education graduates and the world of work.

"We need an industrial-based training center that is responsive to the needs of the times. Starting from digital technology, modern agriculture, logistics, to renewable energy. The state must be present to create a life-long learning system," said Puan, Friday, July 11.

Puan assessed that the fact that millions of unemployed scholars showed the weakness of the education system, employment policy, and the direction of structural national economic development.

"We are facing a big challenge where more than a million undergraduate graduates are still struggling to get work. This indicates that our system, both education and the labor market, has not been connected to the real needs of the business and industry," said Puan.

Puan emphasized that this condition cannot be allowed to drag on. According to him, the government must act quickly and dare to take corrective steps as a whole.

Therefore, Puan encouraged the government to evaluate the higher education system and vocational schools, to be more relevant to the needs of the labor market in the next five to ten years.

"Kampus and SMK must be part of the national productive ecosystem, not just an academic title factory," said the former Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture.

Puan also assessed the need for a productive sector expansion policy and employment investment that focuses on a labor-intensive industry with added value, the green sector, and the digital economy.

"Fiscal regulation and incentives must be directed to create more formal workspace, not just grow the informal sector," continued Puan.

Puan also encouraged the government to build integrated digital platforms across ministries by involving the Ministry of Manpower, the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas), the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry, and the Ministry of Investment and Downstreaming / Investment Coordinating Agency (BKPM) which are able to map out sectoral labor needs dynamically.

"Then this ministry must be able to connect job seekers who graduated from undergraduates/SMK with relevant job training and vacancies. As well as inform data-based future work projections," said Puan.

"As long as ministries and institutions are still working in their respective barriers, the problem of unemployment will never be solved. We need orchestration, not partial solutions," he concluded.

The Ministry of Manpower previously opened data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) regarding the number of unemployed in Indonesia which reached 7.28 million people as of February 2025.

Of this number, 1.01 million of them are university graduates or undergraduates.

In the latest data reported by BPS, the unemployment rate in February was at 4.76 percent of the Indonesian workforce based on its educational status.

In the first ranks, the highest number of unemployed came from the educational status of elementary and junior high school 2.42 million people. In second place, there are people with high school education status of 2.04 million.

In the third position, vocational education contributed to unemployment as many as 1.63 million people, followed by university graduates as many as 1.01 million people. Finally, there was a diploma graduate with a contribution of 177.39 thousand unemployed people.