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Celebrating catastrophic surplus of labor?
For both formal and informal workers, rising surplus labor is definitely not a bonus. It is simply a catastrophic situation.
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Two workers of precast concrete maker PT Wijaya Karya Beton checks the company products at its factory in Cileungsi, Bogor, West Java . (Antara/M Agung Rajasa)
T
he so-called demographic bonus has been in the spotlight of public discourse for the last few years. Last week, however, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo stated a rather careful caveat regarding the coming decade of the demographic bonus (2020 to 2030). Noting that 70 percent of the total workforce would be of the productive age of between 16 and 64 years.
President Jokowi accentuated the urgent need to improve human resources through widening access to education for all, covered by state-sponsored scholarships.
Without such improvement, he warned, the demographic bonus would be a boomerang for our nation. But is this an adequate policy to prevent such a cataclysmic outcome?
In 2013, the International Labor Organization (ILO) reported that about 62 percent of the total workforce was precarious. Casual workers, unpaid family laborers and self-employed workers join the informal sector in despair of finding any formal jobs opportunities.
A large number of unpaid family laborers are petty farmers in the countryside who own only a meager plot of land to sustain their livelihood. Ironically, petty farmers also need to find any kind of waged employment, either on-farm or off-farm, to earn extra income if they wish to retain their already small plot of land.
Those excluded entirely from accessing land are obliged to be wage laborers. Sometimes they find paid employment in their neighborhood, tilling the land for the wealthier farmers. In other times, they obtain casual jobs available in the surrounding rural area.
Tens of millions of rural working people who cannot find any paid employment or who fail to earn substantial income from petty self-employment decide to move to the city.
