Graduates are queuing for Jakarta's street-cleaning jobs, and they are right to

In June 2025 the Jakarta city government opened 1,023 jobs with PPSU, the agency whose workers in orange vests sweep streets, clear drains and patch pavements across the city's 239 urban villages. The advertisement asked for a primary school certificate, or simply the ability to read and write. More than 7,000 people applied. In Serdang, Central Jakarta, 127 people competed for a single vacancy, and seven of them held bachelor's degrees. In Cipayung, East Jakarta, 326 went for six places. Writing for Indonesia at Melbourne, Elita Pertiwi and Raden Muhamad Purnagunawan say those graduates were not being foolish.

Look at what the job pays and it makes sense. PPSU work carried Jakarta's minimum wage, Rp5,396,761 a month in 2025, plus BPJS health and employment insurance and the annual holiday allowance. That makes it formal work: a contract, a payslip, cover if you get hurt. Much of what is actually open to graduates is not formal at all. Informal jobs, meaning work with no contract and no insurance, made up 48 per cent of urban employment and 72 per cent of rural employment in 2023.

The pattern is national, not a Jakarta oddity. BPS found that 22.36 per cent of young workers in 2025 were "overeducated", which means holding a qualification higher than the job needs. Six in ten urban Gen Z wage earners with a bachelor's degree work below their level, and the Segara Research Institute estimates about 17 per cent of ojek drivers have a degree. The authors point to a mismatch of speed. Indonesia lifted university enrolment from 16 per cent of the age group in 2003 to 45 per cent in 2023, while the jobs needing that training grew nowhere near as fast. Unemployment now sits at 5.4 per cent for university graduates and 8.6 per cent for vocational ones.

Why it matters

If you or your child is finishing a degree, the question worth asking is no longer which faculty but whether the work at the end comes with a contract and insurance. The authors want investment projects judged on the quality of the jobs they create rather than the headline count, and BPJS Employment widened to informal and platform workers, which would reach the ojek drivers and street traders many graduates end up joining. As they put it: "They read the labour market correctly. It is the labour market that needs to be corrected."