Labour-rich Indonesia to send 100,000 workers to ageing Japan, reap benefits of ‘demographic dividend’
- Indonesia is keen to benefit from its young population and its role as one of the largest suppliers of migrant workers is likely to ‘grow substantially’ in the future
- Young Indonesians say they are able to earn more in Japan than back home, but hope for better living conditions such as availability of halal food
Japan’s intake of Indonesian migrant workers is expected to quadruple in the next few years, in a major cooperation boost that will help the East Asian country ease labour shortages brought about by an ageing population.
Indonesia is expected to send an additional 100,000 workers to Japan in the next five years, and will provide “app-based application systems” to help jobseekers “find employment matching their skills in Japan”, Anwar Sanusi, secretary general of the country’s Ministry of Manpower, said at a Jakarta job fair in October.
In April 2019, Japan initiated a scheme to take in foreigners classified as Specified Skilled Workers (SSW), known in Japanese as tokuteigino, to address growing labour shortages in the country. A concurrent but older programme, known as Technical Intern Training Program (TITP), has also been popular with foreign workers looking for ways to enter Japan’s labour market.
Japan would need 6.7 million foreign workers by 2040 to meet its own projected economic growth rates, according to a 2022 report by the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
For its part, Indonesia is eager to benefit from its “demographic dividend” – 70 per cent of its population is now aged between 17 and 64 – and reduce its unemployment rate, which is officially at 5.32 per cent, representing 7.86 million working-age adults.
“Indonesia is one of the largest suppliers of foreign migrant workers to Japan and the trend is likely to continue and grow substantially in the future,” Dody Kusumonegoro, first economic consul at the Indonesian consulate in Osaka, told This Week In Asia.
