Target 19 Million Jobs Threatened To Fail, Economist Calls Employment Inequality

Job vacancies (photo: dock. Antara)

JAKARTA - Head of the Center for Macroeconomics and Finance of the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF) M Rizal Taufikurahman assessed that the current labor conditions show an imbalance between targets and realization.

"The government is targeting 19 million new jobs, but BPS data only records a decline in unemployment of around 4,000 people," he told VOI, Thursday, November 6.

According to him, this condition shows that economic growth of 5 percent has not been able to create adequate employment opportunities (jobless growth), because the labor-intensive sector is still stagnant, while expansion actually occurs in capital-intensive sectors such as digital and finance.

He added that the data shows that there are structural problems in the labor market and most of the new jobs appear in the informal sector with low productivity levels.

In addition, Rizal conveyed that there was a discrepancy in skills (skills mismatch) between industrial needs and labor competencies. As well as labor elasticity to economic growth has also weakened, where the economy grows, but employment is barely moving.

"This indicates that industrial modernization is not accompanied by an increase in labor capacity," he said.

According to him, with a trend like this, the target of creating 19 million jobs will be difficult to achieve without significant structural reforms and the Government needs to prioritize several strategic steps.

He added strategic steps such as improving the quality of human resources (HR), restructuring education and vocational training, providing incentives for labor-intensive sectors, as well as directing investment into sectors that have high multiplier effects, such as manufacturing, modern agriculture, and a green economy.

"Without it, job creation will only be an administrative number that does not suppress unemployment in real terms," he concluded.

Previously, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) recorded that the number of unemployed in Indonesia in August 2025 reached 7.46 million people.

BPS Deputy for Balance and Statistics Analysis Moh Edy Mahmud explained that this number showed a decline of around 4,000 people compared to the same period in the previous year.

"The workforce that is not absorbed by the labor market has become unemployed is 7.46 million people or a decrease of around 4,000 people compared to August 2024," he said at a BPS press conference, Wednesday, November 5.

Furthermore, Edy said that the number of working-age population as of August 2025 reached 218.17 million people, or an increase of 2.80 million people compared to the previous year.

Of this number, the workforce reached 154 million people, an increase of 1.89 million people, while non-workforces were recorded at 64.17 million people, an increase of about 0.91 million people.

Edy said that of the total workforce, 146.54 million of them have worked, an increase of about 1.90 million people compared to August 2024.

"If detailed, the working population consisted of the first full worker who was 98.65 million people or an increase of about 0.20 million people. Meanwhile, 36.29 million part-time workers increased by 1.66 million people. Then 11.60 million people or an increase of 0.04 million people," he said.