What Does It Really Cost to Employ Daycare Staff in Indonesia?

A wage floor you do not set yourself

Staff cost is the largest line in most daycare budgets, and the part of it you actually control is smaller than it looks. The provincial minimum wage, the UMP, is decided by each governor once a year and applies whether or not your enrolment grew that year.

For DKI Jakarta the UMP for 2026 was set at Rp5.729.876 per month, a rise of 6,17 percent or Rp333.115 over the previous year, announced in December 2025. That figure is Jakarta and nowhere else. Every province issues its own decree, so a centre in Bandung, Surabaya or Denpasar works from a different number, and the safe move is to read the decree for your own province rather than borrowing the Jakarta headline because it is the one the news repeated.

The UMP is a floor for a full time worker. It is not a recommended salary, and it is not the whole cost of employing someone. The contributions below sit on top of it.

What does BPJS Ketenagakerjaan add on top of the wage?

BPJS Ketenagakerjaan is not a single deduction. It is four programmes, each with its own rate and its own split between the centre and the worker.

Jaminan Hari Tua, the old age benefit, is 5,7 percent of monthly wage in total. The centre pays 3,7 percent and 2 percent is deducted from the worker.

Jaminan Pensiun, the pension, is 3 percent in total, split as 2 percent from the centre and 1 percent from the worker. It is calculated against a wage ceiling of Rp10.547.000, so a salary above that ceiling does not keep increasing the contribution.

Jaminan Kematian, the death benefit, is 0,3 percent, and the centre pays all of it. Jaminan Kecelakaan Kerja, work accident cover, runs from 0,24 percent to 1,74 percent depending on the occupational risk class your business is registered under, and the centre pays all of that too. Which class applies to you is a registration fact rather than a judgement call, so confirm the class you are actually registered under instead of assuming childcare sits at the bottom of the range.

Employer contribution and worker deduction are different money

This is the distinction that quietly wrecks a budget, because the two are usually quoted as one blended percentage and only one of them is your cost. Your additional cost as the employer is the JHT employer share of 3,7 percent, the JP employer share of 2 percent, the whole of JKM at 0,3 percent, and the whole of JKK at whatever your registered risk class is. Add those together with your own JKK figure and you have the real uplift on every wage you pay.

The worker's take home pay is separately reduced by the JHT 2 percent and the JP 1 percent. That is not a cost to your centre, but it is absolutely a conversation with the person you have just hired, because the number on the offer letter is not the number that lands in their account. New caregivers who have only ever worked informally are often surprised by the first payslip, and that surprise is cheaper to handle at the interview than in the second month.

There is no single national percentage anyone can quote you, because JKK varies by risk class. Anyone who gives you one figure for the whole country has skipped a step.

Does a PAUD or yayasan have to register its teachers?

Many small centres assume the employment social security rules are written for factories and offices, and that a yayasan running a TPA or a KB sits outside them. That assumption is worth checking rather than inheriting.

A Kemendikbud circular issued in 2021 directs satuan pendidikan to enrol their teaching and support staff in the employment social security programme, and it names nonformal units alongside formal ones. Being small, private or foundation run does not by itself put a centre outside that instruction.

Coverage across the sector has historically been thin. BPJS Ketenagakerjaan reported 882.000 registered education sector workers against roughly 2,5 million in the sector, about 36 percent, as at January 2022. Treat that as the dated snapshot it is rather than as today's position, but it does tell you that a centre which has not registered its staff is in familiar company, not in the clear.

If you are unsure where your own entity stands, ask BPJS Ketenagakerjaan or your Dinas directly. Do not take the answer from a competitor down the road, and do not take it from a payroll blog written for a PT.

When is THR due, and can you pay it in instalments?

No, you cannot spread it. The religious holiday allowance must be paid in full, and it must reach the worker no later than seven days before the religious holiday. The circular the Ministry of Manpower issued for this year restates both points, and it restates them every year because employers keep trying to pay in parts.

The entitlement is straightforward. A worker with twelve months of service or more receives one month of wage.

A worker with less than that receives a proportion, calculated as their months of service divided by twelve, multiplied by one month of wage. The caregiver you hired part way through the year is entitled to a pro rata payment, not to nothing.

The practical failure here is not disagreement with the rule. It is cash. THR lands as a single large outflow in a month when fee collection is often disrupted by the holiday itself, and a centre that has not been setting money aside meets it with an empty account.

Building the real monthly cost of one caregiver

Work it out in this order, once, and keep the sheet. Start from the wage you are actually paying, checked against the UMP decree for your own province rather than for Jakarta.

Add your employer side contributions as percentages of that wage, using your registered JKK class rather than a borrowed one. Then add one twelfth of a month's wage for every month, because that is what THR costs when you spread the saving instead of the payment.

That gives you the monthly cost of one caregiver. Multiply it out across your roster and compare it against what your enrolled families actually pay you each month. Most operators who do this for the first time discover their fees were set against the salary line alone, and that the gap has been coming out of the owner's margin ever since.

Do it before you set next year's fees, not after. The UMP for the coming year is announced towards the end of the previous one, which gives you a short window to price against a number you already know rather than one you are guessing at.

What changes when staff cost becomes a fixed floor?

Once you have the real figure, the strategic position changes. Wages, employer contributions and THR are largely not negotiable and they rise on a schedule you do not control. The variable you can move is on the other side of the ledger, which is how full your centre is, how reliably fees arrive, and how quickly you notice when they do not.

To be direct about what software does and does not do here, Happy Kamper does not run payroll, produce payslips or file BPJS contributions. Those stay with you, your accountant or your payroll provider. What a platform can do is make the revenue side predictable enough to carry a fixed cost base, by keeping enrolment records in one place so you know your real occupancy rather than your remembered one, by handling billing and invoicing so unpaid fees surface as a number instead of a suspicion, and by reporting on both so a shortfall shows up in the month it happens.

For a centre running early education and daycare, that is the honest division of labour. The employment rules set your floor. Your job is to make sure the money coming in clears it, and to know that in time to act.