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Kelvin
Kelvin

Posted on • Originally published at lokerdollar.com

Indonesian IT job posts mention AI 28x less than global remote roles - the data

I run a job aggregator focused on Indonesian and global remote work. In May 2026 I pulled two datasets — 1,039 Indonesian IT listings (JobStreet Indonesia + Loker.id) and a global remote pool of 2,517 listings — and scanned how often each mentions AI in the job title.

The gap was bigger than I expected.

The 28x gap

  • Global remote: 8.6% of listings (216 of 2,517) carried an AI signal in the title.
  • Indonesian IT: 0.3% (3 of 1,039).

Same method both sides — a title-keyword scan — so it's apples-to-apples. That's roughly a 28x difference in how visibly AI shows up in what employers advertise.

Why it matters

If you're hiring in Indonesia, the signal your competitors abroad are sending — "we want people who work with AI" — is almost absent locally. If you're a developer in Indonesia targeting remote roles, the global market is already pricing AI fluency into the title of the job, not just the body.

This is not "Indonesia is behind." Title text is a lagging, noisy proxy. But a 28x gap in what gets advertised is a real distribution difference worth knowing before you write your next JD or your next CV.

Caveats (this isn't a peer-reviewed study)

  • Not a random sample, no confidence intervals. Classification was a single pass over 199 enriched listings.
  • Title-level scan only — a role can use AI heavily without saying so in the title.
  • Snapshot in time: May 2026.

Full methodology and every limitation: Data Notes

Free datasets (CSV, no signup): Indonesian IT — replicated · Global remote — preview

Full write-up with all six findings: Indonesia IT vs Global Remote — 6 findings

Top comments (1)

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Luis

Really interesting dataset — the 28x gap is striking, even accounting for title-level noise and sampling limitations.

What stands out is less “AI adoption” itself and more signal visibility: global remote roles are explicitly marketing AI capability in the job title, while Indonesian listings seem to keep it implicit or absent. That alone creates a perception gap in the market, even if underlying usage is closer than it appears.

I also think your caveat is important — title-only classification will always undercount real AI usage — but as a hiring signal proxy, this is still very meaningful. Employers don’t just use titles to describe work, they use them to position against competitors.

Would be interesting to extend this by segmenting by role type (backend, data, frontend) or seniority to see where the gap is actually concentrated.