Employment Shift in the Ecommerce Trend

Oleh: Teddy Indira Budiwan, S.Psi., MM (Faculty Member of International Marketing)

There is no mistake that e-commerce has hit Indonesia big. Eyeing an economy of 100 Billion USD in 2023, Indonesia is going to be the driving economy, larger than the other Southeast Asian countries combined [1]. According to idEA [2], labors with no specific skill will be affected. This was apparent when the non cash toll payment was implemented in 2017.

Also affected are the offline retailers in the rural areas who are going to be outcompeted with the growing numer of rural consumers gaining internet access.

By going digital, Indonesia has the potential to increase the productivity of its resources. Comparing the level of digitization and productivity, Indonesia lies around India, Thailand and Brazil.

Figure 1 Level of Digitization and Labor Productivity

Source: McKinsey

Indonesia digital revolution has the potential to a productivity impact of 120 Billion US Dollars by 2025.

Figure 2 Estimated GDP Impact by Digitization

Source: McKinsey

A report by BPS Statistics Indonesia [3] states that Indonesia e-commerce industry so far has absorp mainly local worker (99.78%), and contrary to popular belief, employs mostly non-IT workers (60.81% and 28.63% respetively). The non-IT workers have marketing, sales, customer service and support skills. The IT workers are mainly developer (around 2/3), then product and infrastructure.

Facing this, Indonesia will need around 9 million digital talents. That is around 600,000 per year. Therefor the Government is taking an active lead in getting the human resource ready. One of the requirement is in the digital economy area, so there is a big push on establishing a Digital Economy Study Program. There is also a scholarship dubbed the Digital Talent Scholarship 2019, aimed to serve 25,000 Indonesian who are not yet scholar. The program will cover cloud computing, digital policies,  coding, programming, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, machine learning, Internet of Things, cybersecurity, graphics design and animation. The scholarship is targeted to prepare the human resource needed by the year 2025 [4].

References

[1]         Statista, “Top 10 e-commerce sites in Indonesia in 2018,” Statista, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.statista.com/statistics/869700/indonesia-top-10-e-commerce-sites/.

[2]         H. Kusuma, “Tak Hanya Ritel, Ini Sektor yang Akan Tergerus Online,” detikFinance, 2017. [Online]. Available: https://finance.detik.com/berita-ekonomi-bisnis/d-3701300/tak-hanya-ritel-ini-sektor-yang-akan-tergerus-online.

[3]         A. Nuraini, “Indonesia Initiative in Measuring E-Commerce,” BPS Statistics Indonesia, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/trade/events/2018/Beijing/presentations/Indonesia.pdf.

[4]         T. Umali, “Indonesia’s initiatives to meet human resources requirement,” Open Gov, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.opengovasia.com/indonesias-initiatives-to-meet-human-resources-requirement/.