Last week’s International Labor Organization report revealed that 19.4 young Indonesians aged 15-24 years were jobless.
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The country’s employment sector is facing serious challenges. The number of young people who do not work or do not have decent jobs is very large.
Last week’s International Labor Organization (ILO) report revealed that 19.4 young Indonesians aged 15-24 years were jobless. The proportion of jobless young adults not enrolled in education or training courses is 23.2 percent, while most of those with jobs work in the informal sector in dangerous jobs or do not have decent work.
One of the ILO’s recommendations is to utilize digital technology, which requires human resources capacity training and improvement. Digital technology has caused disruptions throughout the world. Rich countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are attentive to mastery in digital technology, especially for women, who are still being left behind.
Digital technology is like a double-edged sword. On one side, this technology improves productivity by facilitating and expanding connectivity, speeding up archival work, data searches and many other things. On the other side, digital technology changes many things, starting from the way we communicate to business models.
Digital technology also opens many new job opportunities for the future, while at the same time replacing human workers with robots and automation. The ILO’s 2016 report predicted that, within the next two decades, 56 percent of employment or about 60 million of human jobs in ASEAN would be replaced by automation.
The occupations that will be the most affected are farmers, sales representatives at retail stores, office administrators and sewing-related occupations. The sectors that will disappear due to automation are building construction and retail. The automotive and textile industries, as well as textile manufacturing, will also be affected, especially in low to medium-skilled jobs. Female workers in the textile manufacturing sector, which make up 60 percent of the workforce, are the most vulnerable to being replaced by automation.
These projections about disruptions due to digital technology remind us that human resources’ mastery of digital technology should be implemented, and not remain as mere discourse. Half of our current workforce is a graduate of junior high school or below. However, Indonesia must first have a clear and consistent direction, strategy and framework on developing manpower towards industrialization.
The industries that will still be needed, at least within the next two decades, are the manufacturing industry, along with the digital information and technology industry. Special attention also needs to be given to the food and agriculture industry and the non-digital creative economy industry.
Having a policy direction for industrialization can streamline all policies, beginning with education and training that are suited to our manpower, and up to credit and tax incentives.