The Number Of Indonesian Middle Classes Is Down, Economists: Economic Indications Are Not Good During The Jokowi Era

JAKARTA - President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) will step down in October 2024. His leadership era is only a month away.

However, many problems have not been resolved over a decade of his leadership.

One of them is the number of middle class residents who continued to decline during the era of Jokowi's leadership.

It is known, based on data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) which refers to the World Bank, the number of middle class residents decreased by 9.48 million people from 57.33 million people in 2019 to 47.85 million people in 2024. In percentage, it decreased by 4.13 percent.

Meanwhile, groups heading to the middle class reached 115 million people or 45 percent of the total population.

Bright Institute economist Awalil Rizky opened up regarding the impact of the decline in the number of middle class population to the performance of the Indonesian economy.

Awalil assessed that the reduction in the middle class indicated poor economic performance during the Jokowi administration era.

"Moreover, it was followed by an increase in groups towards the middle class and vulnerable poor groups. Even stagnation in the number of poor people occurred in the 2019-2024 period," he said in a written statement received by VOI, Wednesday, September 18.

According to him, this phenomenon will also increase the risk of the Indonesian economy in the coming years.

Moreover, if there is an external shock or a global condition that worsens, Indonesia does not have strong enough durability.

"In addition, the dream of growing 8 percent is almost impossible to materialize. The reduction in the middle class will make consumption growth difficult. In fact, some small and medium-scale investments will be eroded," he said.

Not only the middle class continues to decline, Awil said, but those who are vulnerable to poverty also have more serious problems.

"Many of them are not classified as poor but are around the poverty line and are very vulnerable to falling poor. Some of them are only helped by social assistance programs and the like," he said.

Thus, he continued, this phenomenon caused the gloomy economic prospects.

In fact, social disparities will tend to increase and could have an impact on social and political instability.

"The weakening of the national economic resilience in the event of external shocks in the coming years," he said.