While a few sought-after employees leapfrog from one company to another, reaping benefits along the way, many Indonesian workers are worried about holding on to the job they have right now.

Job cuts are often the first survival measure when market economies are flat or declining, and last year was no exception as the economy took a beating, a survey on employment found.

According to the online survey conducted by ACNielsen last November, 38 percent of the 500 Indonesian respondents had either been laid off or had an immediate member of their family lose their job in the past year, heightening their fears about their job security.

Thailand had the highest percentage of respondents experiencing the pain of layoffs firsthand (16 percent), but Indonesia stood out with almost a third of respondents with an immediate family member made redundant in the past 12 months.

"Indonesia's figure is the highest among countries in the Asia-Pacific region," Nielsen executive director Catherine Eddy said Tuesday of the survey, also conducted in 42 other countries.

The Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) reported that about 350,000 workers lost their jobs last year, an almost tripling of the 138,000 employees laid off the previous year.

Companies have been forced to streamline their factory workforce after a fuel price increase last year and the government's failure to effect its promised incentives to revive the economy, Apindo secretary-general Djimanto said earlier this year.

"The high prevalence of layoffs leads to people feeling insecure about their current jobs," Catherine added.

Although 40 percent of the respondents said that they had a secure job, 39 percent were insecure about their position.

A total of 85 percent of the respondents said the government was not doing enough to encourage job creation. The figure is higher than that of neighboring Asian countries like Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.

According to a survey by University of Indonesia's Institute for Economic and Social Research (LPEM-UI), job creation actually increased in 2005, with almost two million jobs provided from 1.3 million reported in 2004.

However, the unemployment rate also rose, LPEM-UI economist Chatib Basri said, revealing a 10.3 percent open unemployment rate in 2005 compared to 9.8 percent for the previous year.

"It is indeed a challenge for a big country like Indonesia and people tend to have high expectations of the government," Catherine added.

Indonesia plans to attract more than US$420 billion in additional investment over the next five years to speed up economic growth and provide more jobs for its 106 million workforce.