Medan, North Sumatra – The Chief of Staff to the President, General TNI (ret.) Dr. Moeldoko, affirmed that Indonesia was still confronted with two big challenges in the employment sector. First, the high number of young people who are not currently in education, employment or undergoing training. Second, the skills mismatch between market needs and the workforce.
During the public lecture at the University of North Sumatra (USU), Friday (01/03), Moeldoko said that Indonesian youth aged 15-24 years who are not currently studying, working or undergoing training reach 23,22% in 2022. “One of the highest in ASEAN countries,” he explained.
Regarding the issue of skills mismatch between market needs and labor, according to Moeldoko, causes the unemployment rate for high school and diploma graduates to remain high. Respectively reaching 8.41% and 5.59%. “It is important to understand the complexity of Skill Mismatch and find collaborative solutions to overcome this problem,” he continued.
Moreover, Moeldoko told that labor productivity is one of the keys to actualize Indonesia Emas 2045 vision. So, the labor must be skilled, adaptive, innovative, and able to fill local and global expectations.
Responding to this challenge, he continued, the government has accelerated the implementation of vocational education and training, strengthening reskilling and upskilling training, as well as integrating soft skills for the workforce to anticipate disruption. Apart from that, since 2020 the government has also launched a pre-employment card (Kartu Pra Kerja) program which has currently trained 17.5 million workers. “This is all the government’s effort to bring market needs closer to labor,” said Moeldoko.
On that occasion, Moeldoko, who is also Deputy Chair of the Job Creation Committee, highlighted that the government is aggressively increasing investment in the country. One of the goals is to open up as many job opportunities as possible. For this reason, increasing the skills and competence of Indonesian workers is a necessity to the national future generation. “Don’t just protest about the influx of foreign workers. We also need to improve our skills and competencies,” he said.
As information, before giving a public lecture at the University of North Sumatra, Moeldok visited a training institution for pre-employment card participants in Medan, the Innovam Indonesia Training Center. This institution provides training in the automotive field, especially car electrical repair techniques for light vehicles. The training itself is carried out using an offline scheme.
