Report estimates 22,000 App jobs in Indonesia
JAKARTA—The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) today released a new policy report at a public forum in Jakarta, which measures the growing contribution of digital innovation to the Indonesian economy, compares the environment for investment in Indonesia to other locations in Southeast Asia, and warns of potential policy pitfalls and regulations that might harm future digital growth and economic prosperity in the country.
The report, “Indonesia: Road to the App Economy,” is an effort to measure the thousands of app-related jobs created in Indonesia since the introduction of the smartphone in 2007. Based on a methodology PPI Chief Economic Strategist Dr. Michael Mandel has developed to estimate app job growth in the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and Vietnam, the study is the first to quantify the number of Indonesian jobs directly related to the building, maintenance, support and marketing of applications for smart-devices.
“Up to this point, Indonesia has not been focused on app development. Nevertheless, the country has a rapidly growing number of app developers—these are the people who design and create the apps distributed domestically and internationally,” said Dr. Mandel, author of the report. “Moreover, Indonesian companies that do app development also have to hire sales people, project managers, database programmers, and other types of workers. Finally, each app developer supports a certain number of local jobs.
“In this paper, we estimate that Indonesia has roughly 22,000 App Economy jobs across the entire country. In addition, we show that Indonesia comes in third in our App Economy ranking of major Southeast Asia countries, behind Vietnam and just behind Singapore.
“Why is this important? The implication is that production of mobile apps—both for the domestic and global economies—could become an increasing source of growth in coming years for Indonesia. The Indonesian government is facing an important economic policy decision. Countries are better off nurturing a strong position in mobile app development. The key to growth is to be a creator of mobile apps, not simply a user. That strategy creates a workforce with the right skills and training to prosper in the global economy going forward.”
