Services are an important part of Indonesia’s global trade and thus have a significant impact on the domestic labour market and employment. This applies especially to employment generated through services exports, which grew at a moderate rate in the 2000s. Amounting to only slightly more than 10 percent of the value of total exports and imports, both exports and imports of services grew close to the same rate as commodity trade.

The study was conducted by the ILO through its Project on “Assessing and Addressing the Effects of Trade on Employment (ETE)”, funded by the EU. The Project aims to analyze and support the formulation of effective and coherent trade and labour market policies that address the adjustment challenges that workers and employers face and expand opportunities for the creation of decent employment in developing countries.

The study aims to shed light on the growth of services in Indonesia linkages with other sectors in terms of value‐added and employment using statistics from the national accounts, trade and labour force data as well as input‐output data and related Indonesia’s Government policies on employment. The study was conducted by the ILO’s consultants, Chris Manning and Haryo Aswicahyono.