Indonesia's Ministry of Manpower recorded 462,241 work accidents in 2024: 423,644 among wage-earning participants, 34,364 among non-wage participants and 4,233 among construction-service participants, with claims worth Rp3.49 trillion. The year before, 370,747 cases were recorded with claims of Rp3.04 trillion (Susanto, 2025b). In 2022 the figure was 298,137, and when opening National OHS Month 2025 the Minister of Manpower cited this trend as a reason to build three cultures: leaders who do not readily blame workers, incident reporting, and continuous improvement (Susanto, 2025a).
In early May 2025 the minister added an important caveat: the figure does not include the informal sector or unregistered companies, with coverage he estimated at only about 30 percent of all companies in Indonesia. In his words, if every work accident were recorded the total could be much larger (Sekarrina, 2025). As of mid-June 2025 these 2024 annual figures were the latest national numbers we could find. This article reads them from two angles that are rarely discussed together: who is covered by the data, and who reports.
Source of the Data
The national work accident figure is compiled by the ministry from BPJS Ketenagakerjaan, the state employment insurer, through its integrated labour data system (Susanto, 2025a, 2025b). What gets counted, therefore, are events among workers who are enrolled and whose cases are processed under work accident insurance. At the end of 2024 the insurer covered 45.2 million workers, 35.3 million in the formal sector and 9.9 million non-wage workers. It also estimated that 101.8 million workers were eligible to enrol. Formal sector coverage had reached 86.7 percent, while only 9.9 million of about 61 million non-wage workers were enrolled, or 16.2 percent (Saputra, 2025).
What the Numbers Show
From these figures we calculated a few simple comparisons. Cases among wage-earning and construction-service participants total 427,877, or about 12.1 per 1,000 formal participants. Cases among non-wage participants come to about 3.5 per 1,000. Overall, 462,241 cases over 45.2 million participants gives about 10.2 cases per 1,000 participants in 2024. In 2023, with 41.56 million active participants (Laoli, 2024), the figure was about 8.9 per 1,000. Cases rose by about 24.7 percent from 2023 to 2024, while participants grew by about 8.8 percent.
A global survey offers a comparison from the reporting side. The 2024 World Risk Poll found that around half of the workers harmed at work in the previous two years reported it to someone such as a manager, meaning the other half went unrecorded. Reporting was higher among full-time employees (57 percent) than part-time workers (49 percent) and the self-employed (47 percent). By industry, reporting stood at 61 percent in construction and was lowest in manufacturing at 42 percent. Almost two thirds of the global workforce had never received OHS training on the risks of their work (Lloyd's Register Foundation, 2024).
How to Read Them
In our view three points need to be read together. First, cases grew faster than enrolment, so the 2024 rise cannot be explained by more participants alone. The data cannot tell us, however, whether accidents actually increased or whether more events are now being reported and claimed.
Second, the rate of 3.5 per 1,000 among non-wage workers is very unlikely to mean that informal work is safer. The World Risk Poll finding that the self-employed report least (Lloyd's Register Foundation, 2024) and the minister's remarks on unrecorded sectors (Sekarrina, 2025) fit better with the possibility that most events in this group never enter the data. This is our interpretation, not a tested finding.
Third, around 51 million non-wage workers and about 5 million formal workers were not enrolled (Saputra, 2025), so accidents they suffer sit entirely outside these statistics. The first missing layer is coverage; the second is the willingness and habit to report.
Limits of the Data
Our denominator is the number of participants at year end, and we assume construction-service participants are included in the 35.3 million formal participants, while cases occur throughout the year, so the results are rough approximations, not official incidence rates. The sources we used do not break cases down by severity, sector or commuting accidents. The World Risk Poll is a survey of respondents' experiences presented by region, not Indonesian claims data.
Steps for Companies
- Treat a fall in accident numbers as a question, not an achievement, until it is checked against hazard reports and near misses.
- Record events involving outsourced workers, contractors and freelancers in the same system as permanent staff.
- Compare internal records with the work accident insurance claims submitted to BPJS Ketenagakerjaan to see the gap.
- Measure reporting culture in its own right, for example through a safety climate survey, and give feedback to every reporter.
How Nusa Safety Helps
Nusa Safety helps companies read the reporting culture behind the numbers through the NOSACQ-50 Safety Climate Survey and the Safety Culture Maturity Assessment. To improve the path from report to follow-up, there is incident investigation training, HSE digitalization and the Hazard Report app. Nusa Safety issues internal training certificates only and is not a PJK3.
This article is general information and not legal or professional advice for any specific case.
References
- Laoli, N. (2024, July 10). Rilis laporan keuangan 2023, peserta BPJS Ketenagakerjaan tumbuh 44,96% [2023 financial report released, BPJS Ketenagakerjaan participants grow 44.96%]. Kontan.co.id. https://nasional.kontan.co.id/news/rilis-laporan-keuangan-2023-peserta-bpjs-ketenagakerjaan-tumbuh-4496
- Lloyd's Register Foundation. (2024). World Risk Poll 2024 report: Engineering safer workplaces, global trends in occupational safety and health. https://doi.org/10.60743/x8md-v972
- Saputra, F. (2025, March 6). BPJS Ketenagakerjaan telah lindungi 45,2 juta pekerja Indonesia hingga 2024 [BPJS Ketenagakerjaan has covered 45.2 million Indonesian workers through 2024]. Kontan.co.id. https://keuangan.kontan.co.id/news/bpjs-ketenagakerjaan-telah-lindungi-452-juta-pekerja-indonesia-hingga-2024
- Sekarrina. (2025, May 3). Menaker: Kunci budaya K3 kuat adalah hubungan industrial harmonis [Minister: The key to a strong OHS culture is harmonious industrial relations]. detikNews. https://news.detik.com/berita/d-7897866/menaker-kunci-budaya-k3-kuat-adalah-hubungan-industrial-harmonis
- Susanto, V. Y. (2025a, January 14). Menteri Ketenagakerjaan soroti tren peningkatan jumlah kecelakaan kerja [Minister of Manpower highlights rising trend in work accidents]. Kontan.co.id. https://nasional.kontan.co.id/news/menteri-ketenagakerjaan-soroti-tren-peningkatan-jumlah-kecelakaan-kerja
- Susanto, V. Y. (2025b, March 2). Jumlah kecelakaan kerja capai 462.241 kasus di sepanjang tahun 2024 [Work accidents reach 462,241 cases in 2024]. Kontan.co.id. https://nasional.kontan.co.id/news/jumlah-kecelakaan-kerja-capai-462241-kasus-di-sepanjang-tahun-2024
