Indonesia’s unemployment fell to 4.75%. Underemployment rose.

The table describes changes in the size of each group. It does not follow individual workers between categories. The fall in part-time employment therefore cannot, on its own, tell us how many people obtained full-time work or moved into underemployment.

The two headline percentages also use different denominators. The 4.75% unemployment rate refers to the labor force; BPS’s underemployment rate divides underemployed people by those employed. Calculating 12.84 million as a share of 147.99 million gives approximately 8.68%. Adding these two percentages would produce a misleading combined rate.

Why layoffs can coexist with falling unemployment

BPS official M. Edy Mahmud offered a concrete explanation at the briefing, reported by detikFinance on November 6: someone who loses a formal job may take informal work or fewer hours and remain classified as employed. He said work to earn or help earn income for at least one hour in the reference week meets the employment threshold.

Consider a hypothetical employee who loses a factory job and begins taking occasional paid work while looking for another position. Their income and hours may deteriorate even though they still count as employed. That illustrates the statistical mechanism; the aggregate totals do not establish how often this particular transition occurred.

What the release can—and cannot—tell us

The overall unemployment trend also conceals differences between groups. Bisnis.com reported that male unemployment fell from 4.85% to 4.64%, while female unemployment rose from 4.84% to 4.93%. A national improvement does not imply the same change for every job seeker.

These head counts and hours categories do not measure whether earnings cover living costs, whether contracts are secure, or why particular workers had insufficient hours. Those questions require wage, price and employment-arrangement evidence. For someone assessing the labor market, the useful distinction is between gaining any employment and obtaining enough paid work: this release records improvement in the first measure alongside deterioration in an important measure of the second.