unemployment in tangerang? a disillusioned consultant's messy notes
look, i’m not supposed to be here. my last consulting gig was in singapore, telling some ceo that his pivot to ‘digital synergy’ was just a fancy way of saying ‘we have no idea what we’re doing’. but i burned out on powerpoint decks and six-figure insomnia, so i took a cheap flight to jakarta and ended up in tangerang. my mission? supposedly to ‘assess the economic landscape’. my real mission? to find out if the buzz about this place being jakarta’s overflow bin is true, or if there’s something actually happening.
first, the numbers. you can’t talk about tangerang without the numbers. they’re ugly, they’re sticky, and they don’t fit on a neat slide. according to badan pusat statistik, tangerang city’s unemployment rate hovers around 5-6%, which is ‘okay’ by national standards but feels like a lie when you’re stuck on the s11 highway at 7pm. the ‘economic growth’ everyone quotes? 6-ish percent annually. sounds great until you realize most of that growth is in warehousing for e-commerce giants and cheap-ass housing for the java overflow. it’s growth, but it’s the kind where you build another goddamn mall with the same 15 stores.
*jakarta’s shadow is the first thing you feel here. it’s not just proximity-it’s a gravitational pull of despair. the job market is a echo chamber. you want a corporate slime-job? you commute to sudirman. you want to actually make something? good luck finding affordable space. the industrial zones in jelatuk and kroya? they’re humming, but it’s mostly factory lines and logistics hubs. not exactly ‘creative economy’.
so i tracked down a ‘local resident’ for my fake interview. meet ‘pak budi’ (name changed because i’m not trying to get cancelled). he’s a project manager at a firm in bsd city, lives in a kost in bintaro. here’s our chat:
q: is the job market as bad as the rumors?
a: the rumors are optimists. the market is split. one side: multinationals in bsd, but they hire from jakarta campuses first. other side: local smes that pay ‘gaji kantor’ (office salary) which is basically half your soul. you’re either overqualified for what you get, or underpaid for what you know. the real money’s in contracting, but that’s the gig economy rollercoaster-no u朕, no peace.
q: cost of living?
a: rent in bintaro or BSD? forget it. a tiny studio now goes for 3.5-4 million idr. that’s my entire ‘consultant bonus’ right there. but you can find a room in a shared house in the older parts of tangerang for 1.2 million, if you don’t mind the sound of a family of roosters at 4am. food’s cheap, but the quality… look, i eat nasi padang from a warteg that’s been there 20 years. that’s my economic growth.
q: the biggest lie they tell?
a: that tangerang is a ‘commuter city’. it’s a traffic city. you don’t commute, you sacrifice. you sacrifice 3 hours a day to be ‘close’ to a job that doesn’t pay enough to justify the sacrifice. the government talks about MRT extensions, but it’s always ‘next year’. meanwhile, every week a new skyline of apartments goes up in ciputat, filled with people who work in jakarta and dream of escape.
overheard gossip #1: at a warung kopi near csW, two guys in dirty t-shirts were arguing. one said, ‘the new industrial park in jurangmangu is just a fancy name for a sweatbox. they fired 200 people last month because the chinese buyers cancelled orders.’ the other laughed, ‘that’s not layoffs, that’s ‘optimization’. my cousin got optimized three times this year.’
overheard gossip #2: from an expat facebook group: ‘anyone know a reliable handyman in tangerang? the one we used got a ‘better opportunity’ in a factory. turns out ‘handyman’ is code for ‘any job that pays today’.
drunk advice from a british guy at a bar in bintaro: ‘don’t look at the official stats. go to the emall in alam sutera on a saturday. it’s full of young people with money they don’t have, spending it on things they’ll forget. that’s the real economy. desperation in glossy packaging.’
the weather here is a sticky, unrepentant blanket. it’s either a wetheat that soaks your shirt in 5 minutes, or a dry, dusty heat that makes your throat feel like sandpaper. you get used to the smell: clove cigarettes, frying oil, and the faint, ever-present scent of monsoon drain. and jakarta is always, always there-a hazy, grimy horizon you can see from the top floor of any building. it’s not a neighbor; it’s the landlord you can’t get rid of.
for actual, useful noise from people trying to live here, you have to dig. the r/indonesia subreddit has threads about ‘tangsel vs tangcity’ that read like territorial disputes. yelp reviews for ‘karyawan’ are often just people complaining about management. but the real talk is on local facebook groups-‘tangerang komunitas’-where someone will post, ‘anyone need a freelance graphic designer? i can work for idr 300k per project’ and get 50 replies in an hour.
so what’s the state? it’s a pressure cooker. the economic growth is real, but it’s lopsided, feeding the logistics giants and the property developers. the unemployment figure is a statistical band-aid over a gaping wound of underemployment and misaligned skills. young people with degrees are driving gojek because the ‘professional’ jobs either pay poverty wages or require 5 years experience for an entry-level role. the city is expanding, yes-new toll roads, new malls-but the expansion is a treadmill. you’re running faster just to stay in the same humid, traffic-choked spot.
my consultant brain wants to say ‘diversify the economic base, upskill the workforce, improve public transport’. my human brain, the one stuck in a matic jam for an hour just to get a decent coffee, just laughs. tangerang isn’t a ‘case study’. it’s a living, breathing, sweating organism that grew too fast and now has growing pains it can’t afford to treat. it’s not nestled, it’s not vibrant. it’s just… there. working, waiting, and wondering when the traffic will finally move.
[editor's note: this post is filed under ‘human-vibe’ because i’m too tired to be professional. if you’re looking for a glossy travel guide, try tripadvisor - they have a list of ‘top things to do in tangerang’ that seems to ignore the fact that 80% of the city is just trying to get from a to b without dying. also, check out this subreddit thread on ‘living in tangerang on a budget’ for actual human stories, not corporate brochures.]*
You might also be interested in:
- https://topiclo.com/post/shopping-in-tyumen-from-local-markets-to-luxury-malls
- https://topiclo.com/post/top-industries-driving-the-economy-of-adelaide-a-digital-nomads-messy-rant
- https://topiclo.com/post/networking-events-and-professional-communities-in-sofia-dont-sleep-on-this-seriously
- https://topiclo.com/post/broke-in-santa-fe-and-the-strings-are-still-tuning
- https://topiclo.com/post/rhythms-and-resonance-a-musicians-chaotic-love-affair-with-enugus-hills