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t least 20,000 seasonal workers at furniture factories in Jepara have lost their jobs as global demand for the signature wood carving products from the city in Central Java have continued to decline this year.

Andang Wahyu Triyanto, the owner of furniture company CV Kalingga Jati, said that overseas demand this year had dropped by over 30 percent compared to last year, forcing many employers to send most of their seasonal workers home to absorb the decline in production.

'€œWe are now only able to maintain our full-time workers,'€ Andang told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

At least 200,000 Jepara residents work in the furniture industry, with many of them being only seasonal employees, who work for home industries or only if there are orders from companies.

Andang'€™s company, for example, employs around 200 permanent and seasonal workers. It produces outdoor and garden furniture products for overseas markets in Europe and the US.

'€œBefore the global economy weakened, we could export between 10 to 15 containers of furniture products every month to different countries, each worth Rp 500 million (US$34,280). Since 2014, however, we have only been able to ship at most six containers monthly,'€ said Andang, who also leads the Jepara branch of the Indonesian Rattan and Wooden Furniture Association.

Located some 70 kilometers northeast of the Central Java provincial capital of Semarang, Jepara is home to some 12,000 furniture producers. Of that number, 75 percent are home industries employing less than 10 workers.

The city also has more than a dozen large-sized furniture companies that employ hundreds of workers, while the rest are middle-scale firms employing between 10 and 100 employees.

Jepara, according to Andans, accounts for some 30 percent of the national furniture market. Other furniture production centers are also found in the Central Java city of Surakarta, the East Java provincial capital of Surabaya, the West Java city of Cirebon and Jakarta, the nation'€™s capital.

Despite Jepara'€™s status as market leader in the industry, Andang said there were between 20,000 and 30,000 seasonal laborers in the city who had lost their jobs due to the declining demand for furniture products.

Abdul Kholiq of Java Furni Experindo, another local firm, said that before the economic slowdown he could export up to four containers of classic furniture products a month to several European countries.

'€œNow we can only export one container per month, or only eight to nine for the whole year,'€ said Kholiq, who now employs 80 workers.

Kurniawati, who employs nine workers at her small-scale furniture firm UD Karunia Indotama, told a similar story.

'€œWe must make smart innovations to maintain our businesses,'€ she said. '€œI, for example, have been producing tables that can be attached to a wall, making them minimalist in style and economic in space.'€

To attract buyers, Kurniawati said she had been designing a folding dining table. By offering such new designs, Kurniawati said she could still export only one container of furniture products a year.

'€œI am trying to maintain quality. A buyer, for example, once demanded German-made bolts for a product, so I waited until the bolts arrived before assembling it,'€ she said.