Illustration: Working. (Image via Pixabay/RonaldCandonga)

Jokowi: Post-COVID joblessness is an important homework

President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo (Jokowi), revealed that the Indonesian Government is trusted with a lot of "homework" from the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. One of which is unemployment, caused by mass work termination. Speaking on Thursday during the Annual Meeting of Bank of Indonesia (BI), the President urged all parties to focus & think of a way out of pandemic and restore the crippling economy.

Besides the spike in the unemployment rate, another homework is to provide jobs for the huge amount of job seekers. Jokowi asserted that the Indonesian Government has been struggling to crank up jobs for those in need. One of which was through the ratification of the Law No. 11 of 2020 on Job Creation. With the Law, the Indonesian Government pledged to make a structural change and simplify complex regulation & bureaucracy.

Previously, the unemployment problem was mentioned by the Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, Airlangga Hartarto. He stated that the Indonesian Government had not figured out a solution to the problem. COVID-19 caused a 2.67 hike to the unemployment rate to 9.77 million people in August 2020. It also caused the open unemployment rate in August 2020 spiked to 7.07%, higher than the same period last year at 5.23%.

Meanwhile, the head of the Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM), Bahlil Lahadalia, also stated that as many as 17 million people were looking for opportunities. From the number, 7 million people are jobless, plus the annual 2.5 million increase in the labour force. Besides, the figure also included 7 - 8 million job seekers who had lost their job due to COVID-19.

Source: https://bit.ly/37xX2eK