On 29 November 2023, at a seminar in Jakarta on digitising competency certification, the chair of the Construction Professionals Association (Hiptasi) said that Indonesia's professional certification bodies (LSP) had so far produced only about 720,000 certified construction workers (Kontan.co.id, 2023; Nasution, 2023). The figure came at the end of a year in which, according to the same association, infrastructure work was proceeding on a massive scale.
This article reads that figure alongside other data available up to December 2023, and explains what can and cannot be concluded from it for project and contractor management.
The Data Sources
Four sources are used. The first is Hiptasi's November 2023 statement as reported by two national media outlets (Kontan.co.id, 2023; Nasution, 2023). The second is a statement by the Ministry of Public Works and Housing (PUPR) in April 2018 that only about 700,000 construction workers were certified, with a target of 3 million certified workers by the end of 2019, equal to 37.5 percent of the construction workforce at the time (Satrianegara, 2018). The third is the August 2023 National Labour Force Survey (Sakernas) presented by Statistics Indonesia (BPS): construction added 770,000 workers compared with August 2022, the second-largest increase after accommodation and food services (Rachman, 2023). The fourth is a certification assessor's statement that construction worker certificates are valid for 5 years and can be renewed (Laucereno, 2022).
The legal basis is Law No. 2 of 2017 on Construction Services. Article 70 requires every construction worker to hold a Work Competency Certificate and requires project owners and contractors to employ certified construction workers (Pemerintah Republik Indonesia, 2017).
What the Numbers Show
From the 2018 target, we estimate the construction workforce at the time at about 8 million people (3 million divided by 37.5 percent). With 700,000 certified, coverage was about 8.75 percent, consistent with the headline figure of 9 percent (Satrianegara, 2018).
Five years later, the figure cited by the association is about 720,000, almost the same. Yet in the past year alone the construction sector added 770,000 workers (Rachman, 2023). The one-year increase in workers is larger than the entire certified total cited. We do not calculate 2023 coverage, because the sources we found do not give the total construction workforce for that year.
How to Read Them
First, separate stock from flow. Certificates are valid for 5 years (Laucereno, 2022). If many certificates issued around 2018 were not renewed, the number of valid certificates could stay flat even as new certification continued. This is a hypothesis consistent with the data, not a finding, because the sources do not say whether 720,000 counts all certificates ever issued or only those still valid.
Second, watch the definition of demand. From the same event, one outlet reported demand for certified workers at 2 million (Nasution, 2023), while another reported 12 million (Kontan.co.id, 2023). A sixfold gap may reflect different definitions or a reporting error, and we cannot resolve it from the available sources. Demand figures are best not quoted without the original document.
Third, a certificate is not the same as competence on site. It shows that a person passed a competency test at one point in time, while safe behaviour day to day still depends on supervision, work methods and project culture.
Limits of the Data
All of the figures above come from news reports quoting officials or associations, not from official tables we could check directly. BPS counts people working in the construction sector, including informal workers, while the statutory certification duty applies to workers in construction services. Year-to-year comparisons should therefore be read as direction, not precise values. Nor did we find a breakdown by level, such as how many are experts and how many are skilled workers, even though that breakdown is the most useful for judging project readiness. Open, up-to-date registration data that can be split by level and region would help far more than round numbers in news reports.
What It Means
In our assessment, the key message is simple: project owners cannot assume a contractor's workers are certified. Practical steps include putting the personnel list and certificates into prequalification documents, checking validity dates and whether the certificate type matches the work, requiring the list to be updated whenever workers change, and linking permits for high-risk work to valid evidence of competence.
How Nusa Safety Helps
Nusa Safety helps project owners set contractor prequalification criteria that check workforce competence through CSMS Development and Prequalification, and assesses how they work in practice through an HSE and CSMS Audit. Nusa Safety does not issue construction Work Competency Certificates; these are issued through authorised professional certification bodies.
This article is general information and not legal or professional advice for any specific case.
References
- Kontan.co.id. (2023, November 30). Hiptasi: Kebutuhan tenaga kerja konstruksi bersertifikat tembus 12 juta [Hiptasi: Demand for certified construction workers reaches 12 million]. https://industri.kontan.co.id/news/hiptasi-kebutuhan-tenaga-kerja-konstruksi-bersertifikat-tembus-12-juta
- Laucereno, S. F. (2022, September 28). Pekerja konstruksi wajib tersertifikasi agar gaji lebih gede [Construction workers must be certified to earn more]. detikFinance. https://finance.detik.com/infrastruktur/d-6317588/pekerja-konstruksi-wajib-tersertifikasi-agar-gaji-lebih-gede
- Nasution, D. D. (2023, November 29). Sertifikasi tenaga kerja konstruksi di RI masih minim [Construction workforce certification in Indonesia remains low]. Republika. https://ekonomi.republika.co.id/berita/s4vzat349/sertifikasi-tenaga-kerja-konstruksi-di-ri-masih-minim
- Pemerintah Republik Indonesia. (2017). Undang-Undang Nomor 2 Tahun 2017 tentang Jasa Konstruksi [Law No. 2 of 2017 on Construction Services]. https://pasal.id/peraturan/uu/uu-no-2-tahun-2017
- Rachman, A. (2023, November 6). Sakernas: Serapan tenaga kerja manufaktur RI minim [Sakernas: Manufacturing absorbs few workers]. CNBC Indonesia. https://www.cnbcindonesia.com/news/20231106180529-4-486824/sakernas-serapan-tenaga-kerja-manufaktur-ri-minim
- Satrianegara, R. (2018, April 28). PUPR sebut baru 9% pekerja konstruksi bersertifikasi [PUPR says only 9% of construction workers are certified]. CNBC Indonesia. https://www.cnbcindonesia.com/news/20180428153523-4-12889/pupr-sebut-baru-9-pekerja-konstruksi-bersertifikasi
