Dealing with Unemployment Alleviation in Pandemic Era by Enhancing Start Up Business Through Mosque-Based Business Incubators: Indonesian Case

Abstract

This study aims to obtain an overview of the potential of new entrepreneurs that can be generated by mosque-based business incubators as well as the number of workers who can potentially be absorbed by the new businesses that are created. Business incubators are needed because the majority of entrepreneurs who started businesses in the Covid- 19 pandemic era entrepreneurs who are categorized as necessity-based entrepreneurs, namely entrepreneurs who choose to do business because they have no choice of working in the formal sector. This type of entrepreneurship is different from an opportunity- based entrepreneur who chooses to become an entrepreneur because he sees opportunities to gain greater profits compared to working in the formal sector. The research method used in this research is descriptive research method using secondary data obtained from the Mosque Information System - Ministry of Religion; the number of tenants a higher education business incubator can produce per year based on previous research and the number of workers absorbed by micro and medium enterprises based on data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS). This study uses three scenarios for the number of tenants that can be generated by mosque-based business incubators per year, namely 15 tenants per year for the optimistic scenario; 12 tenants per year for the mediocre scenario and 5 tenants per year for the pessimistic assumption. The number of workers that can be absorbed by the UMKM sector is set arbitrarily at 5 workers per SME’s (UMKM), which is the lowest limit for the number of workers that can be absorbed by MSMEs based on the publication of the Central Statistics Agency. While the mosque chosen is Masjid Jami (Jami Mosque) for three reasons. (1) Jami mosques are spread all over Indonesia (2) Jami mosques have a management structure called the Mosque Prosperity Council (DKM) (3) Jami mosques have funding sources originating from UPZ. The results showed the potential number of tenants / new entrepreneurs that could be generated through the application of mosque-based business incubators for the optimistic, mediocre and pessimistic scenarios were (1) 3,316,380 (2) 2,653,104 (3) 1,105,460, respectively. Meanwhile, the potential for employment for the three optimistic, mediocre and pessimistic scenarios are: (1) 16,581,900 (2) 13,265,520 (3) 5,527,300 workers. If the potential number of labor that new entrepreneurs can generate by mosque-based incubators throughout Indonesia compare to unemployment number recently in Indonesia, it is clear that the development of mosque-based business incubators can be a strategic step to reduce unemployment in Indonesia in the long term.