15 employees..no customers

Shop front for money laundering?

Yes, money laundering. And also the employment of nieces and nephews

Zepo wrote:

What is the typical wage for some of these people?

My understanding is that it is about 2 million a month.  If it is a restaurant they may be lucky to have free meals.

Typically, communist regimes have been famous for giving millions of people 'non-jobs'. just to stand around and then the  (fake communist) govt. can declare there is 0% unemployment in their socialist utopia etc......


8k an hour, 1.8 mill a month is common here.

Indonesia is not commie (illegal here) but many shops operate in the same way as mentioned in the OP.
That being the case, I respectfully suggest the theory regarding communist governments is either in error or only a partial factor.

Fred wrote:

That being the case, I respectfully suggest the theory regarding communist governments is either in error or only a partial factor.

There still may be more people employed as street sweepers than needed but that would mostly be a matter of forgoing automation to increase employment among the urban poor..  In fact good government jobs may be in short supply.  Before we met, I am told that one of my brother's-in-law joined the Party so that he could have a job but later when he quit to start his own business, he quit the Party just as quickly.

The jobs that the OP is talking about would all seem to be with private businesses.  Matt's observation about relatives may be correct.  Notice too that most of these people are quite young as their salary never could support a family.  With time they may look for better or go back to technical schools.