Jakarta — President Prabowo Subianto’s administration continues to accelerate job creation and economic equality through two major policy directions: expanding overseas employment opportunities for vocational school graduates and strengthening village-based investment. This step is seen as an appropriate strategy to address youth unemployment while simultaneously promoting villages as centers of national economic growth.
The government officially launched the SMK Go Global Program and the Jakarta Job Festival 2025, offering thousands of international job opportunities. Coordinating Minister for Community Empowerment Muhaimin Iskandar stated that the government will initially send 500 vocational high school graduates as a pilot project with a budget of Rp 2.6 billion, before expanding to 500,000 participants by 2026.
“God willing, under the President’s orders and directives, this program for the end of 2025 and 2026 will place vocational high school and high school graduates interested in specialized skills, such as welding, hospitality, maintenance, and others, so they can work better and earn good salaries abroad,” Muhaimin said.
The Ministry of P2MI (Indonesian Migrant Workers Association) has prepared 7,600 overseas job positions through collaboration with 20 migrant worker placement companies, along with more than 12,000 domestic vacancies from 70 national companies.
Deputy Minister of P2MI Christina Aryani emphasized that her ministry’s participation in the festival is a concrete step towards officially expanding access to overseas employment.
The government’s reason for accelerating this program is the unemployment rate among vocational school graduates, which has reached 1.5–1.6 million. Muhaimin emphasized this as the program’s background.
“This program arose from concern that there are still around 1.6 million unemployed vocational school graduates. We are working to empower them and ensure they find employment, including abroad,” he said.
Minister of P2MI Mukhtarudin stated the ministry’s readiness to execute this placement.
“We’ve detailed it by competency, mapped out and profiled the placement countries and their respective job sectors. In principle, we at KP2MI are ready to execute this program,” he said.
Meanwhile, the government is strengthening the economic foundations of villages as a key agenda for equity. Village Minister Yandri Susanto encouraged the younger generation to get directly involved in village development.
“Opportunities exist in villages. We can create egg-laying chicken villages, melon villages, watermelon villages, and so on. Don’t let these opportunities be taken by others just because we don’t take action,” he stressed.
Yandri emphasized the role of villages in supplying national needs and emphasized that village development is the 6th point in President Prabowo’s Astacita.
“Villages are no longer underdeveloped areas. They are new centers of economic growth that support national development,” he said.
According to him, if the village is strong, the entire national economy will also strengthen.
“If the villages are strong, then Indonesia will also be strong,” he concluded.
