East Asia's Youth Opting Out of Jobs Amid AI Rise, Indonesia's Future Outlook

Across East Asia, a growing number of young people are opting out of the job market, a phenomenon fueled by the rapid advancement of AI technologies and slowing economic growth. This trend, sometimes referred to as the "resignation generation" in Japan, is also evident in South Korea's "just resting" category, where nearly half a million people are neither employed nor seeking employment, and China's "lying flat" movement, which eschews traditional social expectations around work and careers. A significant driver of this detachment is AI's increasing encroachment into knowledge work. Particularly, generative AI technologies are demonstrating capabilities in diverse tasks such as writing, code generation, marketing, and even drug development. While AI can augment worker skills and increase productivity in some cases, a growing body of research points to increased risks of job displacement and reduced earnings, especially for younger, entry-level professionals and those in higher-paying sectors. Research from the Bank of Korea, for instance, indicates that the advent of generative AI has coincided with shrinking youth employment in AI-exposed industries, while more senior jobs have continued to grow. In response to these developments, a debate is emerging in South Korea and other countries about how the fruits of the AI revolution should be divided. Prominent suggestions include the creation of sovereign AI funds or a "social solidarity wage." However, leaving aside their practicality, these measures may not address the more profound issue of the loss of "meaningful work opportunities." For many, a job is more than just a livelihood; it provides purpose, structure, and a sense of identity. The blistering speed of AI development threatens to render roles built up over many years of training and experience obsolete. While economics typically posits retraining as a solution, questions arise about what happens when these new roles are themselves eventually automated. Software coding, once lauded as the career of the future, now sits in the eye of the AI automation storm. Sociologist Robert King Merton's 1938 classic, "Social Structure and Anomie," offers a framework for understanding these societal strains. Merton identified that when individuals are denied the means to achieve socially required cultural goals, such as a good job and career, societal tensions arise. One response is "retreatism," akin to the "resignation generation" and "just resting" phenomena, where individuals reject both the goals and the means of attaining them. In South Korea, the proportion of people who believe their children can achieve upward mobility through their own efforts has fallen significantly, yet demand for rigorous tutoring remains high, illustrating a form of "ritualism" where individuals persist despite seemingly unreachable goals. A more positive response to these dislocations lies in "innovation." This could involve greater innovation in educational systems, shifting focus toward human skills like critical thinking, creativity, and empathy, which are relatively insulated from AI exposure. Even greater opportunities lie in fostering "job crafting," the extent to which workers have the freedom to shape their work tasks, relations, and overall work context. For example, a warehouse operative might be given scope to suggest improvements, or an employee could hone selling skills through customer interactions. Research indicates that greater freedom for employees to sculpt work roles is associated with higher engagement, job satisfaction, and performance. In the AI context, this could mean workers delegating routine tasks to AI to focus on problem-solving or customer relationships, or working alongside AI agents to troubleshoot and reconfigure processes. Workers could even be given an ownership stake in AI agents they work with, reinforcing opportunities for mutual learning. Crucially, higher levels of AI knowledge are likely to amplify effective job crafting. A 2025 study by Chengcheng Sha and Tianlong Chai based on a survey of AI-using workers in China found that existing familiarity with AI tools significantly increased job crafting levels. This is more likely to flourish in environments where companies see AI as a genuine force for long-term worker augmentation, as opposed to a short-term cost-cutting fix. Indonesia, like other East Asian nations, faces potential implications from these trends. Its young, digitally-native population, with high levels of AI awareness and social consciousness, may be particularly receptive to the concept of AI-driven job crafting and the redefinition of "meaningful work." Collaborative efforts between the government, educational institutions, and businesses are essential to create new job opportunities and foster the necessary skills development to adapt to these evolving societal and technological shifts, thereby ensuring future stability and prosperity.