Investing In Competences And Skills And Reforming The Labour Market To Create Better Jobs In Indonesia

Favourable demographics has boosted Indonesia's economic growth in recent decades, but its contribution will wane over time. Skills and competences will therefore become increasingly important to raise living standards. Educational attainment has improved considerably, but the quality of education remains disappointing. At the same time, technological changes, new organisational business models and evolving worker preferences make upskilling and reskilling increasingly important. This warrants continuous investment in improving education and lifelong training, in terms of both quality and quantity, with an enhanced role for social partners. Tackling existing and rising skill shortages requires more participation from women, older adults, internal migrants, disadvantaged groups, and foreign workers. Expanding access to early childhood education would provide all children with better opportunities and bring significant benefits. Reducing informality is key to encouraging investment in skills. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted workers' insufficient protection against shocks, underlining the need for unemployment insurance. It is also an opportunity to boost digitalisation and innovate with smart practices. School closures are already penalising learning outcomes and will reduce future earnings.

Indonesia experienced its first recession in over two decades in 2020, although large-scale fiscal stimulus and monetary support limited its depth and impact. The approval of an ambitious package of structural reforms, covering labour laws, taxes and ease of doing business, testifies of the authorities’ commitment to attract high-quality investment that will enhance wealth and well-being.

The COVID-19 pandemic affected a wide range of global sectors, but one of the most important is education. The transition from classroom to computer screen was a difficult one for many Asian students, parents, and teachers. Since this transition, global education systems now mostly depend on online technology. It is crucial that the impact of the pandemic on education is not only examined from a Western point of view, but also from Eastern perspectives. The Handbook of Research on Asian Perspectives of the Educational Impact of COVID-19 provides the current issues the education sector is facing in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. This book investigates the issues and challenges the education sector is facing as well as the future directions needed to provide education in a more effective way. Covering topics such as academic perspectives, university-level employees, and leadership challenges, this book is a dynamic resource for students, teachers, pre-service teachers, school administrators, education providers, faculty, researchers, policymakers, and academicians.

The book focuses on Indonesia's most pressing labor market challenges and associated policy options to achieve higher and more inclusive economic growth. The challenges consist of creating jobs for and the skills in a youthful and increasingly better educated workforce, and raising the productivity of less-educated workers to meet the demands of the digital age. The book deals with a range of interrelated topics---the changing supply and demand for labor in relation to the shift of workers out of agriculture; urbanization and the growth of megacities; raising the quality of schooling for new jobs in the digital economy; and labor market policies to improve both labor standards and productivity.

To address the grand challenges of the 21st century, societies must undergo substantial transformations. Whether the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), set in place by the United Nations as targets to be reached by 2030, can be reached will depend in part on how successfully education strategies empower learners of all ages with the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes to transform themselves, their communities, and their societies. Educational institutions have critical roles to play in facilitating and supporting these transitions. To fulfill this vision and be transformational, however, education and educational institutions themselves will have to be transformed. Digitalization, New Media, and Education for Sustainable Development explores how digitalization and new media are already shaping and will shape the transformation of international educational systems. It examines all aspects related to and interconnections between digitalization, new media, and education for sustainable development. Covering topics such as biased design, energy smart schools, and project-based learning, this premier reference source is an indispensable resource for educators and administrators of both K-12 and higher education, preservice teachers, teacher educators, government officials, policymakers, community leaders, researchers, and academicians.

Indonesia faces the twin challenge of maintaining high economic growth and making growth more inclusive. Most policymakers now agree that better jobs and greater productivity are fundamental for sustaining rapid and more inclusive growth. Improved productivity is essential to maintaining the country's competitiveness. Better jobs are critical for improving living standards and reducing poverty. This book focuses on Indonesia's most pressing labor market challenges and associated policy options. It provides a clear understanding of the labor market, demographic and labor force transitions, and the role of education and skills development to build the foundation for sustainable growth for the next generation.

The topics of unemployment, underemployment, wage trends and patterns, and the relationship between poverty and the labour market are of interest to all policy makers, researchers, academics and journalists concerned with economic development. This book traces the evolution of the Indonesian labour market between the early 1970s and late 2000s. This entails a (a) review of macroeconomic policies and their employment impact; (b) review of unemployment and underemployment trends; (c) review of wage trends and living standards; (d) relationship between poverty, inequality and the labour market; and (e) labour market regulations, employment and the business environment. The book comes up with a number of policy-relevant findings. Macroeconomic policies, particularly inflation targeting in the 2000-2007 period, have not been conducive to employment generation. The assumption that unemployment is an appropriate indicator of labour market performance and, more importantly, that it is closely aligned with poverty, is shown to be inaccurate. Sustained real wage growth in the twenty-year period before the 1997 financial crisis is contrasted with the lack of improvement since then, a period otherwise of respectable economic growth by international standards. The predicted adverse consequences of sweeping labour market regulations in 2000-2007 on properly measured employment, unemployment and labour costs did not materialize, mainly because of low compliance. It seems that a restrictive macroeconomic framework has been more constraining for employment growth than the perceived labour market rigidity during the post-crisis period. The book concludes with an evaluation of several ‘reactive’ and ‘proactive’ labour market policies. Though these are complementary, policy makers in Indonesia have probably put too much emphasis on reactive policies such minimum wage and severance pay, and not enough on proactive policies aimed at creating an adaptable and skilled workforce.

This book studies the challenges for Indonesia, once a miracle economy, as it faces premature deindustrialisation, rising inequality and domestic and external factors impacting its export-oriented industrialization. Since the fall of Soeharto, Indonesia has undergone a far-reaching systemic transition from centralised and autocratic governance to a highly decentralised and democratic system. Complicated by regional variations, the country is now being called upon to respect labour rights and, amidst slow global economic recovery, is facing increased competition from other low-labour-cost countries, especially within the ASEAN Economic Community. Tadjoeddin and Chowdhury posit that Indonesia cannot recreate its past miracle based on cheap labour and suppression of labour rights. It will need to move quickly to high value-added activities driven by productivity growth and to develop its domestic market.

In recent decades, the global economy has experienced a profound transformation due to trade integration and technological progress as well as important political changes. This transformation has been accompanied by significant positive effects at the global level, as increased trade integration has helped to raise incomes in advanced and developing economies, lifting millions out of poverty. At the same time, it has translated into changes experienced by individuals, companies and communities. While overall, better job opportunities are on the rise, workers who are forced to leave their existing jobs may find it difficult to share in these improvements. Policies aimed at facilitating adjustment can reduce the number of those left behind by trade or technology, while at the same time raising the net gains from these developments, improving overall efficiency and boosting incomes. Given the role of skills in productivity and in trade performance as well as in access to employment and wage distribution, a strong emphasis on skills development is vital for both firms and workers. This publication argues that in the current fast-changing context of globalization, where technology and trade relations evolve rapidly, the responsiveness of skills supply to demand plays a central role not only from an efficiency perspective, but also from a distributional perspective. Featuring results from the ILO's Skills for Trade and Economic Diversification (STED) programme, this report shows that appropriate skills development policies are key to helping firms participate in trade, and also to helping workers find good jobs. Co-published with World Trade Organization.