Blog

[JAKARTA] A storm is brewing in Indonesia’s job market. Mass layoffs have surged by a worrying 20.2 per cent this last year, with 78,000 jobs wiped out, and it’s only getting worse.

In January alone, the country’s Ministry of Manpower data revealed that 3,325 workers were left without paychecks, exposing cracks in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.

Amid this crisis, President Prabowo Subianto is racing against time to reignite growth.

His administration is banking on the festive Idul Fitri spending spree to inject momentum, but economists warn that deeper structural issues – and the looming spectre of Donald Trump’s potential trade tariffs –could derail the government’s ambitious 5 per cent growth target for the first quarter.

Teuku Riefky, an economist at the University of Indonesia’s Institute for Economic and Social Research, warns that the ongoing wave of mass layoffs signals a deeper crisis of “premature deindustrialisation”.