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View all search resultsWhen politicians claim success, statisticians take the blame
A low unemployment rate does not prove policy success when the burden of survival has simply been outsourced to struggling families.
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Job seekers sit on the floor on June 8 as they wait for the Bogor Job Fair 2026 to open at Plaza Jambu Dua in Bogor, West Java. (Antara/Arif Firmansyah)
I
n Indonesia, losing a job creates an immediate obligation to secure another income. Rent remains due, children still need to eat. A motorcycle becomes a parcel delivery vehicle, a kitchen transforms into a catering venture and a personal social media account turns into a storefront. These adjustments reflect people’s determination to keep their households afloat; whether they also demonstrate successful economic policy is an entirely separate question.
That distinction deserves greater attention in the ongoing debate over national unemployment figures. Much of the recent public controversy has fixated on the definition of employment, specifically whether working one hour in a single week should qualify an individual as employed.
While this debate has forced Statistics Indonesia (BPS) to defend its methodology, a far more consequential question has escaped scrutiny: What evidence justifies the government’s claim of responsibility for the economic adjustments citizens make on their own?
Citing an unemployment rate of 4.65 percent, heralded as the lowest level since 1994, the government has presented the figure as proof of policy success. On Oct. 27, the Office of the Coordinating Economy Minister linked the milestone directly to programs for the real sector and investment incentives. This interpretation goes beyond reporting a positive labor market trend: It attributes that change directly to state intervention.
Attribution matters because individuals can remain economically active while assuming vastly greater personal risk. A worker who loses a formal salary and turns to preparing meals at home remains classified as employed. Yet that household now finances its own capital, absorbs volatile demand swings and manages illness without paid leave or a safety net. Economic activity persists, but the burden of maintaining it shifts entirely onto the family.
This dynamic distorts how government performance is evaluated. The very resourcefulness that shields a family from total destitution also renders its precarity invisible in headline indicators. When officials point to these numbers to celebrate policy triumphs, citizens’ capacity to absorb hardship is effectively co-opted as an administrative achievement. Counting an individual as employed establishes neither who created the opportunity, who paid for it, nor who shoulders the cost of failure.
BPS has demanding methodological reasons to record irregular, small-scale economic activities. The one-hour criterion aligns with International Labour Organization standards adopted in 2013, designed to capture any productive participation during a reference period. Other complementary indicators exist to evaluate the broader quality and security of work.
Maintaining these standards is critical: An informal worker's labor should not vanish from the national statistical record merely because it is precarious. Altering statistical definitions to defuse political contention would erode longitudinal comparisons and compromise evidence-based evaluation.
However, reliable measurement cannot substitute for policy evaluation. An employment survey reflects outcomes shaped by myriad private decisions and macroeconomic variables. Claiming that specific programs drove an improvement requires empirical substantiation. The state must prove that its policies created opportunities beyond what households and enterprises would have achieved on their own.
The burden of proof rests with policymakers. Citizens should not have to disprove government contributions simply because a headline indicator moves favorably. Officials claiming credit must demonstrate the causal mechanisms connecting their interventions to measured gains. Otherwise, an administration receives default credit for activity it merely observed rather than generated.
The political appeal of this arrangement is obvious. Household resilience sustains economic momentum even when social safety nets fall short. Families draw down savings, redistribute domestic labor and juggle informal gigs.
While this adaptability buys time, it diminishes the state's urgency to confront the degree to which financial insecurity has been privatized. Over time, endurance becomes normalized: As long as citizens survive, conditions appear manageable, and resilience is rewarded only with further expectations of resilience.
This asymmetry also produces an uneven distribution of reputational consequences. While political leaders claim credit for favorable data, public frustration over lived hardship is redirected at the statistical authority. When economic indicators clash with daily experience, BPS is forced to defend its integrity against allegations of manipulation.
A methodological brief can clarify why informal work is counted, but it cannot answer whether a livelihood is dignified or sustainable. Those answers belong to the architects of public policy. Treating public dissatisfaction merely as an educational deficit allows leaders to evade accountability. Being accurately categorized by a statistical framework offers cold comfort to citizens navigating compounded financial risk.
Public trust in official statistics is an indispensable collective asset. Businesses rely on it to allocate investment, scholars use it to test hypotheses, and citizens depend on it to hold power to account. When political rhetoric distorts what an indicator can prove, public trust erodes.
Protecting this trust requires political restraint: Leaders must distinguish between an observed trend and a proven policy effect, claiming success through rigorous program evaluation rather than casual proximity to a favorable figure.
A declining unemployment rate is welcome news, but it does not resolve whether economic policy is fostering genuine security.
Citizens' tireless efforts to provide for themselves deserve respect. Before absorbing those efforts into official victory laps, the government must demonstrate its own tangible contribution to their success.
The responsibility for establishing that contribution belongs to political leaders, and should remain with them.
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The writer is a statistician focusing on labor, demographic data and evidence-based policymaking at Statistics Indonesia (BPS). The views expressed are personal.
