Unemployment looking uglier
The current economic slowdown is, without much fanfare, causing social unrest as it continues to push the unemployment rate further up. The story of people losing jobs, although it is not openly discussed, is always dreadful.
The number of workers dismissed following the fall of the rupiah is not known exactly, but in the construction sector, which has been the hardest hit by the monetary instability, two million workers are believed to have lost their jobs since August in Jakarta and its surrounding industrial towns alone.
The chairman of the Association of Indonesian Contractors, Fatchur Rochman, has confirmed the figure to Media Indonesia daily. Data available here has the number of workers absorbed by that sector at 4.32 million.
This picture makes the already ominous face of Jakarta's unemployment rate look even more dangerous. Data recently collected by a city councilor shows there are at least 100 to 500 unemployed people, and a further 500 to 1,000 cases of disguised unemployment, in each of Jakarta's 265 subdistricts.
Currently, the total number of unemployed people in the city, along with the homeless and social outcasts, is estimated at 500,000. According to the City Social Service Agency data, 90 percent of unemployed people come from other parts of the country.
The list of private companies also facing financial trouble is perhaps even longer when combined with the number of banks expected to be liquidated.
This is only a part of the country's unemployment picture, nowadays more and more college graduates are unemployed despite the growing demand for skilled workers in the job market. According to the Ministry of Education and Culture, unemployed university graduates accounted for 13.51 percent of the 2.21 million registered job seekers in 1995.
Meanwhile an economist has predicted that the unemployment rate will reach 10 percent, up from the previous 8 percent, while inflation will be pushed up to 10 percent from last year's 7 percent. Worse still, the rupiah's fall is believed to have been largely caused by a lack of confidence in the national currency.
The picture is gloomy and the number of workers losing their livelihood has reached dangerous proportions. Yet the short-term future does not promise any better conditions. Those who have lost their jobs cannot expect to regain them in the near future. What are they supposed to do? Tighten their belts? Many of them cannot even afford to buy a belt. With their low salaries and small severance allowance these people have long been suffering from their own financial crisis.
Their problem now is how to keep their heads above water. Returning to their rural hometowns is not a feasible option as more and more of their fellow villagers have been pushed out to nearby towns -- or even to Jakarta -- to try to make ends meet and escape the current drought.
In rural areas people have not only been facing scarcity of food, but also of water. In this daunting situation villagers always look to urban centers as their saviors, they believe that towns can always provide better conditions, as "the best place to make money is where the rich spend extravagantly". And when they find that urban reality is not what they always dreamed of, they may turn to crime.
An increase in crime could lead to anxiety among urbanites and less compassion for unemployed migrants. Any increase in the crime rate could aggravate the tension between the haves and the have nots.