JAKARTA: When a local celebrity updated her LinkedIn status to “Open to Work”, she was hoping for positive engagement, curiosity perhaps.
Instead, the digital outrage that followed opened up an uncomfortable debate about privilege and the harsh reality facing Indonesia’s jobless young people today. What was meant as a savvy career flex turned into a flashpoint for young Indonesians who say job hunting is no gimmick.
The post came from popular Indonesian actress Prilly Latuconsina, 29, a co-founder of production house Sinemaku Pictures, who recently announced she was stepping away from the firm. On Jan 26, she told her followers that she was looking to gain “offline sales experience” outside the movie industry and had set her LinkedIn status to signal her availability.
The backlash was swift. Screenshots of her LinkedIn post were taken and shared across Instagram and X, drawing thousands of comments. “It must be so much fun to step on the common people,” Instagram user @algiim_ commented on the post, receiving more than 3,000 likes.
The move was later revealed to be part of a brand collaboration, which was unceremoniously cancelled after Prilly’s post was flooded with criticism and censure from netizens, who accused her of trivialising the job hunt, a struggle many endure in private.
The LinkedIn episode struck a nerve because it tapped into a wider anxiety. Indonesia’s youth unemployment rate consistently runs higher than the national average, and even those with degrees often find themselves unemployed for a long stretch or stuck in contract and gig work.
The unemployment rate for South-east Asia’s largest economy was 4.85 per cent in 2025, according to Indonesia’s Central Statistics Agency. This was the highest rate in South-east Asia, based on data from the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook.
Even more worrying is Indonesia’s rate of youth unemployment. The International Labour Organization estimated that in 2026, 21.6 per cent of Indonesians aged 15 to 24 are not in employment, education or training (NEET), compared with just 6.1 per cent in Singapore.
This puts the archipelago at No. 2, behind Laos, for the highest jobless youth rates in the region. Since the 1990s, the figure for Indonesia has not dipped below 20 per cent.
LinkedIn stunt seen as tone-deaf and ‘insensitive’
In a few weeks’ time, Ebi, 22, may well become a NEET statistic. She is at the tail end of a one-year internship at a human rights non-governmental organisation, and has yet to receive any job offers despite sending out more than 100 applications since she completed her degree in August 2025.
She felt particularly irritated when she saw Prilly’s post.
“Honestly, I was angry; I even ranted about it on Twitter. The campaign was really insensitive,” said Ebi, using her nickname so that she would not be easily identified by potential employers.
The recent graduate, who majored in political studies at Jakarta’s Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, hopes to land a job in the field of human rights, women’s issues, or gender-based violence, but has not had any luck to date.
“A lot of job postings say that they’re open to fresh graduates, but it feels like a lie. They’re actually looking for people with seven years of experience,” Ebi told The Straits Times.
Sometimes, she checks on LinkedIn to see who got the position she was passed over for, and often, it would be someone with a master’s degree, she said.
“I’m starting to feel discouraged,” she admitted.
Rizkia Mardhatillah Putri, 21, graduated from Hasanuddin University in Makassar, South Sulawesi, in October 2025 with a degree in English literature. She has applied for around 15 jobs since then, and has yet to receive a single reply.
“Not even a rejection e-mail,” she said.
Rizkia hopes to find work as a translator, but at this point, she would settle for anything. She has started applying for jobs that have little to do with her major, such as administrative roles. Her coursemates are doing the same, she said.
“Some of them are even working as salespeople at the mall,” she added.
Unlike Ebi, Rizkia has no internship experience but has been an active participant in her campus’ chapter of international youth organisation AIESEC, and spent a few months in Thailand in 2025 as a volunteer English teacher.
She has expanded her job search to outside her home town of Makassar, and is even looking for opportunities to work abroad, though she acknowledges that these are few and far in between.
“At this point, I’m just unsure about what to do,” Rizkia said. “I don’t think I’m ready to be an adult.”
Job market lacklustre despite ‘solid’ economic growth
The uproar over the matter has reopened the discourse on Indonesia’s youth job market, and why it remains lacklustre despite Indonesia’s 5.11 per cent economic growth in 2025, which President Prabowo Subianto’s administration touts as “solid”.
Bhima Yudhistira, executive director of think-tank Center of Economic and Law Studies, said youth unemployment is a longstanding issue in Indonesia, exacerbated by “premature deindustrialisation”.
The term describes the premature decline of the manufacturing sector in developing economies, which can hinder long-term growth, reduce quality job opportunities, and increase social inequality.
He said the high level of youth unemployment in post-pandemic Indonesia reflects the lack of available jobs.
“Most young people who graduate from vocational schools or from university are hoping to get employment in the formal sector, but the jobs available there are shrinking,” he told ST.
Successive administrations have attempted to alleviate the problem through different government programmes.
Under the Prabowo administration, the Manpower Ministry launched a national internship programme for university graduates in 2025, with about 98,000 participants.
But the programme has not made much of a dent in unemployment rates, Mr Bhima said.
“The main issue with the government programme is that there are not enough incentives for participating employers to offer full-time jobs for the interns once the programme ends.”
To truly make headway in tackling the problem, the government should focus more on the supply side to create more jobs.
“The government should shift more incentives to process-manufacturing industries,” Mr Bhima said. “We should push for more entrepreneurship” and encourage such initiatives via incentives and training schemes, he added.
He also feels more could be done to develop and boost creative industries such as tourism, music, and health and wellness. Despite its vast size and many attractions, Indonesia drew only 15.5 million foreign visitors in 2025, compared with Singapore’s 16.6 million, Malaysia’s 25 million and Thailand’s 35.5 million.
“These are industries that can really absorb a lot of labour if they’re expanded,” Bhima said. - The Straits Times/ANN
