Jakarta
Capital and economic hub of Indonesia; political capital transitioning to Nusantara by 2028.
Jakarta's manpower ministry set out a new AI-focused upskilling and reskilling strategy on 29 August 2026, reorienting vocational training toward AI literacy as Indonesia's capital prepares its shift to Nusantara.
Last refreshed: 22 September 2026
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Nomads & CommunitiesBackground
Jakarta is Indonesia's capital and economic hub, though the political capital is being relocated to Nusantara in East Kalimantan by 2028. Around 10.5 million people live in the city itself, with the wider Jabodetabek metropolitan area near 30 million.
The city hosts national ministries and their bureaucracy, including the immigration directorate whose Jakarta offices process the bulk of Indonesia's Visa and permit applications. That concentration of paperwork and fee revenue, which topped 150 per cent of its official 2025 target, has repeatedly drawn scrutiny from the national anti-corruption commission, KPK .
As Indonesia retools its workforce for automation, Jakarta serves as the testing ground for national policy such as the manpower ministry's AI-literacy retraining push, even as the city's own administrative weight is due to shift to Nusantara over the coming years .
Jakarta redirects vocational training to AI
Indonesia's Ministry of Manpower set out a new upskilling and reskilling strategy on 29 August 2026, reorienting vocational training in the capital around AI literacy and automation rather than the trades it previously prioritised .
The ministry set no public numeric targets for graduates or placements, leaving the scale of the shift unclear. Jakarta's move landed in the same window as Vietnam and Turkey setting their own dated AI workforce-training targets, part of a wider regional push to retool vocational systems around automation rather than resist it.
Immigration graft empties Jakarta's permit office
The permit office at the centre of Indonesia's June 2026 immigration graft case sits inside Jakarta itself: investigators say cash moved through its own counters that never reached the ministry's headline revenue figures.
With the acting director general also swept into the case alongside deputy minister Silmy Karim, the capital's permit-processing office has run without settled senior leadership since June, a gap felt most directly by the applicants queuing at its counters day to day, separate from the national policy debate the affair has opened.