"Based on the latest data, it (the national unemployment rate) has declined," he told the media at the Presidential Palace, Jakarta, on Monday.
Effendy affirmed that an increase in the unemployment rate in a city does not necessarily reflect the national manpower conditions in the country.
The minister then highlighted the need to implement people's empowerment programs in major cities to create job opportunities, ultimately suppressing the unemployment rate in urban regions.
Earlier, Minister of Manpower Ida Fauziyah spotlighted Indonesia's success in lowering its open unemployment rate from 5.45 percent in 2023 to 4.82 percent in 2024 during a G20 meeting in Brazil.
Speaking at the meeting held in Fortaleza on July 26, the minister emphasized that the Indonesian government will continue to employ a wide range of measurable and on-point measures with the objective of lowering the rate even further.
Fauziyah explained that the measures include enhancing the quality of educational and training activities, boosting investments by easing permit-obtaining processes, supporting those in the informal sector of the economy to ascend to the formal sector, and developing a national job market information system.
"We will also continue to boost our agricultural productivity. It is important to modernize the agriculture sector by adopting sophisticated technologies that can shoot up productivity and positively affect the tourism and creative economy sectors," she stated.
On August 2, Deputy for Economic Affairs at the National Development Planning Ministry, Amalia Widyasanti, attributed the decline in the open unemployment rate to improved workforce absorption.
She highlighted that people working in the informal sector, however, are still dominating the total number of employed workers in Indonesia.
On that note, the official underscored the need for the government to shift the trend in order to boost the Indonesian workforce's productivity.
"Labor productivity is vital since it reflects Indonesia's economic productivity in general," she remarked.
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Translator: Rangga P/Mentari D, Tegar Nurfitra
Editor: Azis Kurmala
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