Unemployment looking uglier

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.