By any measure, the Tunisian middle class is receding. The most recent study by the Tunisian Institute for Strategic Studies (ITES), affiliated with the Tunisian presidency, revealed that Tunisia’s middle class shrunk from more than 70% of the population in 2010 to 55% in 2018.
Economist and investment consultant Sadok Jabnoun was quoted by Tunisian news agency TAP as saying “the middle class in Tunisia has shrunk by 30%, while it was dominant in Tunisian society by 60%.”
Sociologist Mahmoud Ezzedine says a large segment of the middle class has become poor over the last decade. He estimates the percentage of the poor at about 25%. The latest figures of 15% dates back to 2015 and does not take into consideration the pandemic’s debilitating effect on the job market.
“The coronavirus pandemic has further widened the gap by swelling the ranks of the unemployed, including university graduates who used to embody the hope of the middle class and the poor,” he told The Arab Weekly.
Rising unemployment has accelerated the process. A study conducted by the Tunisian government in partnership with the United Nations Development Program and the Ministry of Investment and International Cooperation on the impact of COVID-19 on the Tunisian economy showed that the unemployment rate in Tunisia is set rise to 21.6% by the end of the year from an estimated 18% currently.
The study, released on June 17, said 274,500 new people will join the unemployed in 2020.
Social analysts confirm that the middle class has atrophied, with many joining the ranks of the poor due to deteriorating economic conditions, especially the loss in purchasing power as cost of living has increased some 30% in recent years.
“The shrinking of the middle class is due to the increase in risks threatening its purchasing power and its ability to borrow, and the weakening of its chances of obtaining housing,” said The Tunisian Institute for Strategic Studies.
Since independence, the Tunisian state has tried to consolidate and preserve the status of the middle class, which it considered essential to preserving social stability.
However, research conducted by the University of Tunis revealed that Tunisians’ purchasing power has decreased annually by 10%, leading to a more than 40% aggregate loss from 2011 to 2016.
With increasing poverty, “there is no more a middle class in Tunisia according to international standards,” Jabnoun told The Arab Weekly.
Tunisian households, he added, suffer from a high level of indebtedness with a changing pattern in bank loans. “Loans serve not to purchase cars or luxury items but to buy food and pay rent and water and electricity bills.”
As the country’s crisis drags on and there are no major development drives, the country’s middle class is expected to continue to suffer even more. Meanwhile, Tunisia’s economic ranking is taking a hit.
Mongi Smaali, an economist with the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), told TAP that an employee’s income determines whether they are in the middle class and that most are university graduates.
Smaali said the middle class has declined since 2011 because of several economic and social factors, including inflation, which spiked at 5.7% in July 2020.
The increase in unemployment, especially among those with higher degrees (18% in the second quarter of 2020), has also affected the decline of the middle class.
Smaali added that the majority of middle-income employees are now unable to cope with the high prices to meet basic needs of housing, health and education. Employees are also now unable to own a home due to high real estate prices.
Experts warned that seeing people move from the middle class to the low-income classes will create a huge gap within society, between two main classes, the poor and rich, as the middle class loses its traditional role as the main balancing bloc.
