"Nike Is Moving Jobs to Low-Wage Regions of Indonesia", 3 March 2026

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Over the last decade, employment at factories supplying [Nike] expanded dramatically in regions of Indonesia where, according to one leading estimate, the minimum wage is less than the amount workers need to live on. Meanwhile, Nike’s supply chain shrank overall in places that pay this estimated living wage, our analysis found.

The trend shows how the movement of multinational corporations to countries with ever-lower labor costs is being replaced, in some cases, by movements within a country that can achieve major savings and improve the bottom line.

Nike’s suppliers employ 280,000 people in Indonesia...

From 2015 through last year, these suppliers shed around 36,000 jobs in places where the monthly minimum wage exceeds or comes close to a living wage. In these high-wage areas, which include the capital of Jakarta, the minimum typically equates to about $300 a month.

By contrast, the company’s supplier workforce grew by nearly 112,000 in parts of Central and West Java with local minimum wages that are typically about $165 a month — far from what’s considered enough to live on. Dozens of workers employed by Nike suppliers in Indonesia told the news organizations the minimum is about all they make...

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Last October, more than 2,000 workers were laid off by Victory Chingluh, one of Nike’s longtime suppliers near Jakarta. In 2024, another 1,500 workers were cut by a Nike shoe supplier nearby, Adis Dimension, according to local news reports.

Labor advocates say the geographic shift is concerning because the Jakarta area has a stronger union presence that ensures working conditions and wages get closer attention than in less-developed places like Central Java.

At Victory Chingluh, three employees told the news organizations that the fear of more job cuts hangs over their work. They said the company is building a new factory in Cirebon, in West Java, where the minimum wage is 45% lower.

Employees said when they were offered a choice between keeping their jobs and accepting severance packages during layoffs last year, workers were willing to take the buyout, fearing that they wouldn’t get anything if the factory closed altogether...

At Victory Chingluh, two union leaders...said they’ve been told the factory being built in Cirebon could be ready by 2027. They said they’ve been told it’s for an expansion — even though their factory recently lost thousands of jobs.

Victory Chingluh did not respond to questions. Nike said in a statement that it works closely with suppliers during layoffs to minimize disruptions. “We mandate that suppliers pay all statutory severance, social security, and other separation benefits required by local law and often assemble working groups — which may include civil society, unions, and local governments — to aid in proper execution,”....

Nike suggests that people who work for its foreign suppliers are well paid. In particular, the company says workers at its strategic suppliers earn an average of nearly double the local minimum wage.

As The Oregonian/OregonLive reported in partnership with ProPublica in January, Nike does not pay workers anywhere close to this amount in Indonesia. In interviews across three regions of the country, roughly 100 workers said they made the minimum wage or a little bit more.

Nike told the news organizations that its figure is a global average and variations naturally exist. But the company also told the news organizations that it’s important not just to compare what its suppliers pay relative to the minimum wage. Nike’s focus, one company official said, is on whether workers make a living wage and, if not, whether their employers are trying to get there...

Nike’s recent move to Central Java is notable because while wages are far lower there than in urban Jakarta, food and housing are not dramatically cheaper, according to estimates from the WageIndicator Foundation...

If each factory worker made exactly the minimum wage and worked only on Nike products, then the company’s shift into lower-cost areas would have saved about $200 million on labor in 2025 alone. The estimate is based on what Nike’s suppliers paid last year versus what they would have paid in labor costs had the company expanded uniformly across regions where it had factories in 2015...

Nike said the analysis “rests on a series of oversimplified assumptions that limit the reliability of its conclusions.”

For example, the company said that to assume the workforce could have grown where suppliers were located in 2015 “does not reflect the realities of manufacturing operations, which are constrained by factors such as facility capacity, workforce availability, skills, technology, and changes in product mix.”

The geographic shift into lower-wage regions of Indonesia shows one way Nike can try to wring more profit from its vast supply chain. The company,...is struggling with declining annual sales and profits, problems compounded by uncertainty around President Donald Trump’s tariffs...

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