JAKARTA: Second jobs are on the rise among young Indonesians, who find one income stream is not enough to cover daily expenses and ensure financial stability for the future, while wage hikes are not what they used to be.
Upi, 26, says the salary from his main job as a business analyst in Jakarta has not kept up with the city's rising living costs. Even though he has no children of his own yet, Upi counts himself as a member of the “sandwich generation”, because he needs to support both his parents and other family members.
Actively searching for a side job to supplement his income, he eventually landed a role as a remote consultant for a firm in Australia. “The downside of having two jobs is that I often get overwhelmed,” he told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday (Nov 26), noting that he regularly worked from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. and typically did weekend work, too.
The long working hours often led to “burnout”, he said, and the remote job required constant adaptation to switch between work agendas in two different time zones.
“I want to move out of Indonesia and find a better job abroad,” he said when asked about his long-term career goal, adding that his current side job had helped him pursue his career and explore working opportunities in white-collar positions abroad.
In Bandung, West Java, 24-year-old Dhela faces a widening gap between her daily household expenses and her main income, as she bears the brunt of delayed projects at the start-up in which she works, in the form of temporary pay cuts.
“I got a [tip for a] side job from a friend, and the pay helps fill the gap, so I decided to take it [...]. Even when my monthly payroll is back to normal, I will keep on doing this side job,” she told the Post on Friday, explaining that her main salary had never been enough.
Dhela believes her side hustle in digital marketing can also upgrade her skills, though she admits that comes at the price of added stress from having even less leisure time after work.
In Bali, 23-year-old Permata does a side gig at a news company in addition to a full-time marketing job, even though she says it does little for her income and is mainly to develop her passion.
In practice, that means working seven days a week with two on-site jobs. “Financially, there are no changes, because the income I get [from freelancing] is not that much, and the salary from my marketing job is cut on my day off,” she told the Post on Thursday.
“I’m considering resigning,” Permata continued, expressing frustration over the exhaustion of juggling two jobs and the minimal financial improvement from moonlighting.
Indonesia has seen an increasing number of workers with side hustles in recent years. According to data from Statistics Indonesia (BPS) published last year, the share of workers with side jobs rose from 11.25 per cent in 2021 to 15.45 per cent in 2023.
A survey published by digital research firm Populix in July revealed that millennial and Gen-Z workers relied heavily on side hustles as a source of income. Twenty-eight per cent of the respondents were supplementing their income through freelance tasks or side jobs, with the share being “significantly higher” among the younger respondents.
Wage hike projections in Indonesia have slowed over the past five years from 8.7 per cent in 2020 to 6.3 per cent this year, according to data from Annual Renumeration Survey conducted by human resources and financial consultancy firm Mercer Indonesia.
Experts say the double jobs trend in Indonesia is a response to uncertainty in the country’s labor market that comes with both opportunities and risks. I Dewa Gede Karma Wisana, associate director of the University of Indonesia’s (UI) Demographic Institute, describes the increasing number of people working side hustles as a natural “market response” to instability in the country’s labour ecosystem due to limited wages and job opportunities.
He told the Post on Wednesday that, while gig economy jobs typically offered flexibility, they could also contribute to a larger shift toward a “precariat”, a new working class with precarious income, with risks including a lack of social security, fluctuating income and a “blurring of leisure and labour time”.
“The government needs to build adaptive regulations to respond to the labour [market] changes,” Dewa said. Young people were scouting the web for remote work opportunities from overseas companies that involved cross-border employment, which would be harder to track and monitor, he noted.
Dewa stressed that the government needed to update its data collection system to capture the multi-job trend, which was crucial to formulating appropriate policies and issuing regulations aimed at ensuring workers' security.
Similarly, Gadjah Mada University labour expert Tadjuddin Noer Effendi told the Post on Wednesday that “stagnant” wages in the country had long driven workers to search for second jobs, as reflected in the growing gig economy.
Tajuddin argued that more side hustle opportunities had contributed positively to household finances, helping many escape the risk of falling into poverty. He said advancing digital technology had given rise to online work opportunities accessible for everyone but warned that gig workers in Indonesia remained vulnerable, given the country's lack of protective measures.
“Besides formal employees, the government also needs to protect the precariat, [...] such as by ensuring their social security,” he said, noting that both online side hustles and other types of freelancing were prone to scams, as they often came with no enforceable legal contracts. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
