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Unemployment remains high at 6.26% as millions continue to reel from pandemic 'fallout'
Despite a general decline in unemployment since last August, the national rate remains high amid employers' reluctance to hire workers during the current recession.
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On the hunt: Job seekers crowd the Education and Career Fair at the Smesco building in Jakarta on Feb. 14, 2014. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is projected to increase the unemployment rate by 5.5 million people this year. (JP/Nurhayati)
T
he national unemployment rate in February remained at a high 6.26 percent as millions of workers continue to reel from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, even after partial resumption of business activities.
Around 8.75 million workers were unemployed in February, increasing by 1.82 million workers from the same month last year, according to Statistics Indonesia (BPS), which released on Wednesday its figures from a biannual survey of 75,000 households conducted in February.
“There has been an improvement, but not a return to the normal level,” BPS head Suhariyanto told a virtual press conference on Wednesday.
February’s unemployment figure is at a level last seen in August 2015.
The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic drove unemployment to a decade-high rate of 7.07 percent in August 2020, when the Indonesian economy began to slide into its first recession in over two decades as mobility restrictions halted business and public activities, leading to lower demand for labor.
The country’s gross domestic product (GDP), which relies heavily on household consumption, contracted 0.74 percent year-on-year (yoy) in the first quarter of 2021 to indicate budding recovery, despite the negative growth figure.
