Academic Opinion Non-Hukum

Why WFH Won't Save the State Budget from Soaring Oil Prices

By Leonyta Nugroho

26 Mar 2026 03:55 WIB 26 March 2026 03:55 WIB 4 minutes reading time: 4 minutes 0 read

Why does WFH fail to resolve the energy crisis? This article reviews the shift in responsibility to individuals that fails to address the root of the energy problem.

Kerja dari rumah digadang jadi solusi, mampukah redam dampak lonjakan harga minyak pada APBN? (Source: AI Gemini, Redaksi Literasi Hukum Indonesia)

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Table of Contents

Work From Home: A Marginal Solution
The Pitfalls of Reactive Policy
Individualization of Responsibility and Shifting of Burden

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Legal Literacy - Amidst uncertain global geopolitical fluctuations, the energy crisis is often responded to with a uniform pattern in various parts of the world, namely a rapid response focused on controlling individual behavior.

When energy commodity prices soar, the public narrative immediately shifts to calls for austerity, reduced mobility, and tightened consumption at the household level. This approach places society as the vanguard and the main target in the crisis mitigation scheme.

Work From Home: A Marginal Solution

The plan to implement a Work From Home (WFH) policy one day a week for state civil apparatus, the private sector, and students in Indonesia in April 2026 is a real manifestation of this pattern. In administrative calculations, this policy is seen as an instrument to keep the state budget deficit below 3% amidst soaring world oil prices that have broken through US$100 per barrel due to tensions in the Strait of Hormuz. The government estimates that savings in fuel consumption could reach 20%.

However, when viewed from a systemic perspective, the effectiveness of this kind of policy tends to be marginal. Although it can reduce the volume of commuters in large cities, the savings are often not significant to total national energy consumption. This policy assumes that work mobility is the main driver of fuel consumption, an assumption that often misses the reality on the ground.

This means that behavior-based policies are an inability to map the economic structure that drives energy consumption. Data shows that the backbone of energy consumption actually lies in the logistics sector, the distribution of goods, and an economic structure that is still highly dependent on large-scale physical mobility.

The problem is not just about individual commuters going to the office, but about how the national supply chain is organized. When policies only target reducing individual travel, the energy "saved" on the highway only shifts to domestic consumption in households, or remains used by industrial and distribution sectors that are not touched by the WFH policy.