How Many Expats Live in Indonesia?

In reality, the Indonesian immigration office certainly must have current and accurate figures of the number of people to which they have issued semi-permanent resident visas and permanent resident visas. This information does not seem to be readily available to the general public, however. Their website shows bar graphs for the numbers of foreigners, which are almost impossible to deciper and years old.

In fact, any comprehensive numbers coming out of the Indonesian immigration office also include large numbers (millions) of ethnic minorities who have lived in Indonesia for generations, but have not changed their citizenship to Indonesian.

The imigrasi section at the central Catatan Sipil office on Gatot Subroto has a big whiteboard with the numbers of expats, listing each nationality for each Kantor Imigrasi in Jakarta. They also draw little graphs showing fluctuations over time, but don't include tourists.

The numbers quoted also can not reflect the number of expatriates who have followed the widely practiced alternative to resident visas of the bi-monthly tourist visa run. However, this practice has been sharply curtailed due to the new immigration policy (Feb. 2004) limited the duration of tourist visas to 30 days. A number of others find ways to work and reside in Indonesia on business visas or social-visit visas, leaving periodically and returning ... and never showing up in semi-permanent resident counts (not advised!)

Another authoritative source of information on the current number of expatriate residents should be the embassies of foreign nationals. The majority of embassies have registration practices where their citizens can register their presence in Indonesia with the embassy. Historically this practice was not followed widely by the majority of expatriates. In the years immediately following the May 1998 riots, and with the subsequent evacuation of many expatriates by their embassies, this practice has perhaps been more closely followed.

However, many expatriates fail to inform their embassies when they depart Indonesia and many choose not to register. Thus, most embassies are doubtful that the number of their citizens that they have registered is an accurate number at any given time for the actual number that are residing in Indonesia.

Another possible source of numbers is the various expatriate community groups. One could add up the membership numbers for each of the groups and come up with a total. But there are many expats who belong to more than one community group ... as well as those who belong to no community organizations. There are also Indonesian nationals who are counted in the membership figures.

To sum up ... no one knows, everyone wants to know, and it would be an enormous research task to determine the true number of expatriates living in Indonesia accurately! Please send us any figures you have received from good sources, and we'll add them to the listing below.

Some historic numbers

In different incarnations the Depnaker website at www.nakertrans.go.id has figures for foreign workers in Indonesia. This number seems extremely low .. but it's the official report! To see this information, as well as breakdowns by nationality, job title, and area ... click on the English button, then click on the "Data and Information Manpower" navigation link, then select Expatriate Workers (3/2010).

Data from the Department of Manpower through the May 2008 show 15, 205. Their breakdown is:

Country	Sub-total	Percentage (%)
Asia (out of ASEAN)	7.719	50,8
ASEAN	3.348	22,0
America	1.316	8,7
Europe	1.227	8,1
Australia	1.196	7,9
Other Europe	258	1,7
Africa	141	0,9
Total	15.205	100,0

In late 2001, the Jakarta Post reported that in 2000, there were 3,256,854 expatriates, including their dependents, registered with Immigration to live/work in Indonesia.

But in October 2003, the Jakarta Post reported: "According to data at the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry, the number of foreigners working in Indonesia has reached around 30,000 and most are employed in the industrial zones in Batam, Jakarta, East Java, Kalimantan and Papua."

However, before the $100/month working bule tax was introduced in 1997, the government said there were 57,000 foreigners working in Indonesia in 1996, earning an estimated $2.4 billion per year (averaging about $42,000 each).

Another discrepancy - UNESCO said that in 1987, the number of foreigners working in Indonesia was 19,000. This number increased to 75,000 in 1990.

And some time after the May 1998 riots, expat numbers in Indonesia were reported as:

Probably the most accurate, up-to-date and credible data comes from the Indonesian Embassy in Malaysia - which breaks the numbers down thus: In 1992, the number of foreigners living in Indonesia was 221,461. Of these, 220,129 were Asians, 2 Africans, 107 Australians, 961 Europeans, and 262 Americans. ...hmmmm

On May 4th, 2004, the white board on the wall of the Kantor Catatan Sipil in Jakarta listed the following numbers for expats in Jakarta:

We don't know how acurate the numbers are .... but that is what is written on the white board!

In 2004, immigration figures showed just under 1,500 expatriates living in Bandung.

In June 2004, the manpower ministry relased data that the number of expatriates working in Indonesia had drastically decreased to around 17,000 in Dec. 2003, from 50,000 in 1999.

An online spreadsheet at the Manpower Ministry (which is now offline) shows the 2005 total of expatriates listed as 50,900 expatriates working in Indonesia!

Our thanks to Tupairoy for his posting on the Expat Forum which initiated this article.

How Many Expats Live in Indonesia?

Who knows?

Some historic numbers