Employment Patterns of Older Persons in Indonesia

Should older persons work for money? This paper aims to provide the first and important step to answer that question, by analysing the employment patters of older persons in Indonesia. It examines what the older persons did in and outside the labour market. It finds that older persons were more likely to work in more flexible working arrangements. Working as self-employed or unpaid workers seemed to be more suitable for the older persons. Older persons were more likely to work as “skilled agricultural and fishery workers”. Also, they tended to work in agricultural or service sectors. This pattern may reflect the current labour market situation and the human capital of the older persons because advances in technology and social innovations, coupled with enhanced human capital of the older persons, will produce completely different employment patterns among older persons, including the older women, in the future.
The published data from 2007 National Labour Force Survey is the main source of the analysis. This paper examines the empirical conditions of older persons’ employment: sex ratio and age structure of the labour force;