Creating Entrepreneurs, Creating Jobs

Job creation cannot be separated from the courage to give birth to new entrepreneurs. When a business is established, it opens up the possibility of new employment, family incomes, state revenues, innovation, and new centres of economic growth. Indonesia’s employment strategy should therefore not only prepare people to seek work, but also create more people capable of providing it.

The Indonesian economy has a promising foundation. Statistics Indonesia (BPS) recorded national economic growth of 5.29 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026. Amid global uncertainty and geopolitical shifts, this achievement demonstrates an economic resilience worthy of appreciation.

Confidence in Indonesia’s prospects is also reflected in investment. The Ministry of Investment and Downstream Industries recorded realised investment of Rp1,010.6 trillion in the first half of 2026, up 7.2 percent on the same period a year earlier. This investment absorbed 1,448,862 Indonesian workers, an increase of around 15 percent year-on-year.

The government has worked to maintain stability, strengthen downstream processing, build infrastructure, and improve the investment climate. Yet the ultimate measure of all these efforts must be returned to people’s lives: how many jobs are created and how much income growth is felt.

BPS recorded the open unemployment rate in May 2026 at around 4.65 percent, or roughly 7.2 million people. This figure shows improvement, but the homework is not finished. In February 2026, around 59.42 percent of the working population remained in the informal sector. They work, but many lack income certainty, social protection, or pathways for skills improvement.

Indonesia cannot simply lower the unemployment rate. We need to improve the quality of work. To achieve this, the nation needs companies that are healthy, productive, and continuously growing.

Large companies do have the capacity to create a significant number of jobs. However, their absorptive capacity has limits. A broader source of employment can instead emerge from thousands of small businesses that scale up and begin recruiting workers.

This is where the entrepreneurship movement finds its relevance. Entrepreneurship has often been understood merely as encouraging young people to start a business. Yet starting a business is only the first step. The real challenge is ensuring the business survives, has a market, improves productivity, and grows into a company.

HIPMI holds a strategic position in this agenda. As an organisation of young entrepreneurs, HIPMI is not merely a place to build networks. It can become a school of entrepreneurship, a space for forming economic leadership, and a bridge between novice entrepreneurs and financing, technology, markets, and government policy.

The election of Ade Jona Prasetyo as General Chairman of the HIPMI Central Board (BPP) for the 2026–2029 term is a moment to bring the organisation into a new stage of service. Success should not be measured merely by the number of activities or business meetings. The more substantive measure is how many new entrepreneurs are created, how many businesses scale up, how many business contracts are formed, and how many workers are recruited.

HIPMI can drive a national movement to create one million productive entrepreneurs. The word “productive” matters, because the movement’s goal is not merely to multiply business identification numbers. The entrepreneurs needed are those who run production, use technology, pay workers fairly, comply with their obligations, and have the potential to grow.

This movement must be built on each region’s potential. Agricultural regions need food-processing entrepreneurs. Plantation areas require downstream industries. Coastal areas need cold storage facilities, marine product processing, and logistics. Tourist regions need transport, culinary, craft, and creative economy businesses.

With this approach, entrepreneurship will not be concentrated in big cities. Jobs can grow closer to where people live. Economic growth will not only be enjoyed by industrial centres, but spread to regencies and cities across the country.