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View all search resultsWhat if young people create, not just seek, jobs?
The future job market belongs not to those waiting for a vacancy, but to the graduates equipped to turn society’s friction into economic opportunity.
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Jobseekers wait in line on June 8 during the opening of the 2026 Bogor Job Fair at Plaza Jambu Dua in Bogor, West Java. (Antara/Arif Firmansyah)
F
or generations, the conventional career path was straightforward: study hard, earn a university degree, secure a stable job and work your way up. For many Indonesian families, this remains the defining aspiration for their children. Yet today’s economic landscape makes that formula increasingly difficult to sustain.
Indonesia has expanded higher education enormously, but degrees alone have not produced a corresponding rise in valuable capabilities. A degree remains important, but it is no longer a reliable guarantor of employability or upward mobility. When credentials become commonplace, what distinguishes graduates is less the certificate on the wall and more what they can execute with what they know.
This friction is visible in Indonesia's youth labor market. Statistics Indonesia (BPS) reports that youth unemployment is twice the historical average, with over a third of young workers employed below their qualification level. The issue is not merely one of job volume; it reflects a mismatch between the skills young people possess and those the contemporary economy demands.
The private sector cannot indefinitely absorb every graduate into productive, well-compensated employment. We must confront an uncomfortable question: What if Indonesia's youth became job creators rather than perpetual job seekers?
This is not a call for every Gen Z graduate to launch a venture. Most will not, and many should not. A resilient economy requires dedicated employees, researchers, civil servants and corporate leaders as much as founders. Entrepreneurship must not serve as a euphemism for underemployment, nor should we romanticize the risks of building an enterprise. The proposition is more grounded: entrepreneurship should become a viable, accessible pathway to economic participation.
While education remains a vital investment, its return now hinges on applied capability. Universities can no longer focus solely on preparing graduates to compete for existing vacancies. Higher education must actively cultivate the capacity to identify problems, recognize commercial opportunities, iterate solutions and generate real value.
Academic research on entrepreneurship has long focused on opportunity recognition. Successful founders do not possess mythical traits denied to others. Rather, they spot subtle shifts in consumer behavior, technology or supply chains that others overlook, using their distinct perspectives to identify latent possibilities.
