Learn Hardcore Indonesian: Angka pengangguran di kota itu turun setelah program magang dibuka luas. - The unemployment rate in that city went down after an internship program was widely opened.

Adding angka (literally number) makes it clear we are talking about a numerical measure: the unemployment rate or unemployment figure.

pengangguran turun
→ could mean unemployment went down (more general)
angka pengangguran turun
→ clearly means the unemployment rate/figure went down

So angka narrows the meaning to a statistic, not just the situation or the people.

What is the difference between pengangguran and penganggur?

penganggur (without -an) = an unemployed person (a countable noun)
- Dia penganggur. → He/She is an unemployed person.
pengangguran (with -an) = unemployment (the state or phenomenon), or unemployed people as a group
- Pengangguran adalah masalah serius. → Unemployment is a serious problem.

In angka pengangguran, it’s clearly the abstract phenomenon or rate of unemployment, not individual people.

Why is turun used instead of menurun? Are both correct?

Both turun and menurun are possible, but there are nuance and style differences:

turun
- Basic verb: to go down, to decrease, to descend
- Very common and neutral in spoken and written Indonesian.
- Works fine for statistics: Angka pengangguran turun.
menurun
- Derived verb with meN- prefix, also means to decrease or to decline.
- Often sounds a bit more formal / textbook-like, and is often used with things that gradually go down:
  - Penjualan menurun. (Sales are declining.)
  - Kondisinya menurun. (His condition is getting worse.)

In this sentence, turun is perfectly natural and common.
You could also say Angka pengangguran di kota itu menurun…, and it would still be correct, just slightly more formal in tone.

What exactly does di kota itu imply? Why is itu used here?

di kota itu literally means in that city.

The demonstrative itu usually implies:

The city is already known to both speaker and listener (mentioned earlier in the conversation or obvious from context), or
It is specific and contrasted with other cities (not just any city in general).

Without itu:

Angka pengangguran di kota turun…
This sounds incomplete or odd in isolation, because kota is not specified. You’d normally expect di kota ini, di kota kami, di kota Jakarta, etc.

So di kota itu functions like English in that city / in that particular city.

Can di kota itu be moved to another position in the sentence?

Yes, Indonesian word order is flexible with adverbial phrases like di kota itu. You can move it for emphasis or style:

Angka pengangguran di kota itu turun setelah program magang dibuka luas.
(Neutral, common order.)
Di kota itu, angka pengangguran turun setelah program magang dibuka luas.
(Emphasizes the place: In that city, the unemployment rate went down…)
Angka pengangguran turun di kota itu setelah program magang dibuka luas.
(Still understandable, slightly different rhythm.)

All are grammatically acceptable. The original version is probably the most natural in neutral prose.

What is the role of setelah here, and can it be replaced by sesudah?

Setelah means after (in a temporal sense), introducing a clause or event that happened earlier in time.

setelah program magang dibuka luas
→ after the internship program was widely opened

You can replace setelah with sesudah; they are near-synonyms:

Angka pengangguran… turun sesudah program magang dibuka luas.

Differences:

setelah is slightly more common in writing and sounds a bit more formal/neutral.
sesudah is very common in speech and also fine in writing.

In most modern usage, they’re interchangeable without changing the meaning.

What does dibuka luas mean literally, and why is luas used instead of an adverb?

Literally:

dibuka = was opened (passive form of membuka = to open)
luas = wide, broad

So word-for-word: opened wide/broadly. Idiomatically here: opened widely, made widely available, opened on a broad scale.

About luas:

luas is an adjective (wide, broad), but Indonesian often uses adjectives directly as adverbial modifiers.
More “textbook” or formally explicit Indonesian would be:
- dibuka secara luas (literally: opened in a wide way)
In real usage, dibuka luas is perfectly natural and common, especially in news or formal writing.

So luas here is functioning like an adverb (describing how it was opened), even though it’s formally an adjective.

Could we say dibuka secara luas instead of dibuka luas? Is there any difference?

Yes, you can say dibuka secara luas. Both are correct:

dibuka luas
- Slightly more concise, still formal enough.
dibuka secara luas
- More explicit, a bit more “bookish” or bureaucratic in style.

Meaning-wise, there is no real difference in this context. Both mean opened widely / on a large scale.

What is the voice and structure of program magang dibuka luas? How would it look in active voice?

program magang dibuka luas is a passive construction:

program magang = the subject/patient (the thing affected)
dibuka = passive verb (di-
- buka, from membuka)
luas = adverbial modifier (widely)

So: the internship program was widely opened.

The active version would look like:

(Pemerintah) membuka program magang itu secara luas.
→ (The government) widely opened that internship program.

If the agent is unknown or unimportant (like “by the government”, “by the city administration”), the passive without mentioning the agent is very natural in Indonesian, especially in news or formal reports.

Why is there no explicit past tense marker for turun or dibuka, when the English translation uses the past tense?

Indonesian verbs do not inflect for tense (past, present, future) the way English verbs do.

Instead, tense is understood from:

Context and
Time expressions (like kemarin = yesterday, sekarang = now, akan / nanti = will/later), or
Conjunctions like setelah (after), which imply a sequence in time.

In this sentence:

setelah program magang dibuka luas
implies that the opening of the program happened before the decrease in unemployment.
From context, this is describing a past event, so English naturally uses “went down” / “decreased” and “was opened”.

But in Indonesian, turun and dibuka themselves are tense-neutral; you infer the time from the rest of the sentence.

Is program magang one program or many? How do we know, since there’s no plural marker?

Indonesian usually doesn’t mark plural overtly unless it needs to be emphasized.

Program magang can mean:

an internship program
the internship program
internship programs (in general)

Which one it is depends on context:

In many news-like sentences, program magang is understood as “the internship program” being discussed, or even a group of internship programs as a single policy initiative.
If the speaker wanted to stress multiplicity, they might say:
- berbagai program magang (various internship programs)
- program-program magang (internship programs, explicitly plural)

Since that’s not done here, the sentence just refers to the internship program initiative, singular in form but possibly broad in scope.

Why is the order program magang and not magang program like in English?

In Indonesian, the head noun usually comes first, and modifiers (including other nouns) follow it.

program = head noun
magang (internship) = noun used as a modifier of program

So program magang literally = program (of) internship, i.e. an internship program.

This pattern is very common:

program pelatihan = training program
program beasiswa = scholarship program
program televisi = TV program

Reversing it (magang program) would be ungrammatical in Indonesian.

Could the sentence be shortened to Pengangguran di kota itu turun… instead of Angka pengangguran…? Would that change the meaning?

Yes, you could say:

Pengangguran di kota itu turun setelah program magang dibuka luas.

This is still understandable and natural. The nuance:

Angka pengangguran…
Emphasizes the statistical rate/figure.
Pengangguran…
More general: “unemployment” as a situation, without explicitly highlighting the numerical aspect.

In many realistic contexts (news, reports), angka pengangguran is preferred if you want to stress data, statistics, or percentages.

Is there any difference in meaning between turun and a more formal verb like berkurang here?

Both work, but their flavor differs slightly:

turun = to go down, drop
- Very common, neutral, and slightly more general.
berkurang = to be reduced, to decrease (focuses on becoming less)
- Often sounds a bit more formal or analytic, especially in written reports.

You could say:

Angka pengangguran di kota itu berkurang setelah program magang dibuka luas.

This is correct and maybe slightly more “formal report” style.
Turun is more straightforward and very natural in both spoken and written Indonesian.