The arrival of foreigners looking for work in Jakarta shows that the capital has become a city with a robust economic potential with a host of diverse job opportunities. 

This means local workers need to work harder and smarter to compete with their migrant counterparts, employers say. 

Erwin Aksa, the deputy chairman of the Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo), said that the presence of foreigners in the city’s job market would not endanger local workers, although workers in some positions would have to hustle not to lose their jobs to outsiders. 

“Managerial and directorial positions in some sectors, in accounting for example, are quite competitive. The demand is so high, while the number of skilled locals is limited.”

Erwin said that the limited availability of local human resources had led companies to fill vacancies with foreign hires. 

“That’s one of the reasons why many companies choose expatriates, from India or the Philippines for example. Many of them are paid lower than some skilled local workers,” he said.

He added that the limited availability of locals to fill executive positions could also be attributed to the rise of consultants. 

The head of executive search company Viventis Search Asia, Zen Smith, agreed with Erwin, saying that a large number of foreign workers in Jakarta was not a threat to local residents, adding, however, that locals needed some extra work to get hired by foreign companies.

As a headhunter, Zen said that sometimes he found it difficult to ensure that his clients chose local candidates who were qualified.

“There are lots of local workers who have the same capability of foreign workers, but sometimes many multinational companies still think that [locals] are not qualified enough and are still below those coming from Singapore and Malaysia,” Zen said. “The stigma attached to local workers, no matter how good they are, has made companies choose foreign workers over the local ones,” he said.

For example, Zen said, information and telecommunications companies preferred to hire workers from India, who have a reputation for superior skills, while financial companies preferred to hire Filipinos.

The presence of foreigners in Jakarta’s labor market has created “tight competition” that was beneficial, he said. Companies could no longer do as they wished, he added. “Otherwise, they will be left out.”

More than a decade after the 1997/ 1998 Asian financial crisis, Jakarta has experienced two years of economic growth, which in turn has attracted foreign nationals to the capital. 

Economic growth has also led multinational companies to expand into Southeast Asia’s largest economy by opening representative offices in the city.

There were 77,300 foreign workers in Indonesia in 2011, up from 59,577 people in 2009, according to the Jakarta Manpower Agency, which pegged the size of the city’s workforce at 5 million in 2011.

Agency head Deded Sukandar said that foreign workers should be seen as a method for knowledge transfer and not as a threat.

“They are hired because we don’t have the expertise in certain sectors. So when they are here, we should be able to grab something valuable from them to improve ourselves,” he said.

Novia D. Rulistia, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta