Unemployment down in August: BPS

Tuesday, 1 December 2009

The Jakarta Post

The country’s open unemployment declined to 7.87 percent in August from 8.14 percent in February, signaling an economic recovery amid the global financial crisis, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) announced Tuesday.

The number of Indonesians in employment reached 104.87 million people in August, up by 380,000 from February, out of a workforce of 113.83 million people.
 
The Indonesian population stood at 231.83 million in August.

"The 380,000 people are likely working in small- and medium-sized enterprises," BPS head Rusman Heriawan told a press conference.

He added that in August the number of workers in the informal sectors reached 67.86 million, or 69.35 percent. About 1.5 million people shifted jobs from the agricultural sector in the villages to the trade sector in cities because August was not harvest season.