This index examines people's current and future perceptions of the economy in terms of job availability, business conditions, general economic conditions, prices and inflation, likely income, and the effects of AIDS and crime on the economy. These two constructs - "where are we now?" and "where are we going?" are then combined into an overall index. The future perceptions measure, in particular, can be a leading indicator of changes in people's spending patterns if it changes over time by any material amount.
The index was first measured in May/June 2002. The MSI will be tracked quarterly, using this first study in May/June 2002 as the benchmark to report future changes. The study was conducted on a sample of 2 000 adults (male and female) in South Africa's main metropolitan areas, and is representative of all population groups in those areas.
Some Findings from the MSI:
Only 7% of SA metropolitan adults feel that jobs are easy to find at the moment. Despite transformation efforts, white males were the most likely to feel that jobs were easy to find (11%), whilst coloureds, both male and female, were the least optimistic in this regard (4%). Jobs still favour the higher income levels, too, where 14% reported that jobs are easy to find at present.
A surprising 84% of SA metropolitan adults feel that AIDS has already had a great impact in South Africa. Scarily, 85% also feel that the impact if the disease will be terrible in the future. However, there are some optimistic people, with 17% saying that its impact won't be as great as some people think. Interestingly, 55% said that AIDS had not really affected them yet, but this figure was much lower for blacks at 46%. The group the hardest hit overall is the 25 - 34 year-old age group (only 48% unaffected), this obviously having dire consequences for the future work force in this country.
An alarming 89% of SA metropolitan adults feel that prices are rising faster than their incomes at the moment - and 58% say that they expect inflation to increase over the next six months. The most pessimistic about the future inflation trend are the white and coloured population groups, and, partially correlated with this, the higher income groups, although these people also do admit that they are coping better with rising prices than other groups at the moment.
Although almost seven out of ten people say that crime is affecting them directly, this rises to over eight out of ten amongst the coloured community. The worst hit areas are Gauteng and Cape Town, overall, with respondents in Durban and the Eastern Cape giving this response about 55% of the time. Crime seems to affect all income levels, with only 22% of people overall saying that crime is not a big factor in their lives.
Although they don't necessarily feel the economy will decline in the next six months, whites are the least optimistic about it improving in that time period. And white females were the least sanguine - only a quarter expected things to improve, compared with 40% across all SA metro adults. Those with the highest expectations were black males (46%). Females were, across all population groups, less optimistic than their male counterparts - perhaps it is the influence of fast-rising food prices that have led to this pessimism.
