Jokowi: Be Careful Gig Economy, Companies Prefer Freelance

President Jokowi/PHOTO via Instagram @jokowi

JAKARTA - President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) highlighted the phenomenon of "gig economy" or a foreign economy that has the potential to become a future economic trend where companies will prefer to recruit freelance or independent workers.

"Gig economy". Be careful with this, the economy is odd, the economy is part-time. If it is not managed properly, this will become a trend. The company prefers independent workers, the company prefers freelance workers," said President Jokowi at the opening of the XXII Indonesian Economics Bachelors Association (ISEI) Congress and the 2024 National Seminar reported by ANTARA, Thursday, September 19.

The President said the trend of the odd economy would make the company prefer workers with short-term contracts, such as freelancers, to reduce the risk of global uncertainty at hand.

The President explained that the odd economy can also employ someone domestically and abroad. That way, job opportunities are getting narrower and less.

The Head of State also hopes that the ISEI 2024 congress and seminar can provide studies to tactical plans to prepare strategies related to the economic situation in the future.

"Those are tactical things like this, what we need. It's not a macro plan that is difficult to implement in a very difficult situation," said the President.

President Jokowi also emphasized that employment is also faced with the challenge of the automation system in various sectors.

With the mechanical automation, artificial intelligence (artificial intelligence) resulted in at least 85 million jobs being lost by 2025.

"Initially we only had mechanical automation, then now AI (artificial intelligence), an analytic automation appears, new things appear every day and if we read 2025 jobs that will be lost, 85 million jobs will be lost, 85 million. The number is not small, we are required to open up jobs instead in 2025, 85 million jobs will be lost because there was an increase in automation in various sectors," said Jokowi.