More than half of Russians are confident in the stability of personal income in 2022, according to a study conducted by Otkritie Bank and Rosgosstrakh insurance company. Basically, such optimists live in the North Caucasus, while there are very few of them in the northwestern regions of the country.
37% of the country's citizens expect a decrease in their income in 2022: 13% - a "significant decrease", 24% believe that their income will "rather decrease". 10% found it difficult to assess the prospects.
32% of respondents believe that their income in 2022 will not change. In the Urals, 41% answered this way, in the North Caucasus - 40%, while in Moscow and the Moscow Region, as well as in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, only 25% each.
At the end of 2022, 21% of Russians expect an increase in their income: 3% of them are significant, and 18% hope that their income will “rather increase”.
Most of these answers were given by survey participants in the North Caucasus (26%), least of all in the Urals (17%) and in the North-Western Federal District (18%).
But in Moscow, 6% of respondents believe that their income "will increase significantly." There are no such optimists in St. Petersburg at all.
At the same time, it is curious that people's optimism about themselves is combined with pessimism in assessing the economic situation in the country.
20% of respondents predict a fall in GDP by more than 10% year-on-year.
Another 23% believe that the economic downturn will be in the range of 5-10%,
17% expect GDP to fall in the range of 1-5% compared to 2021.
11% believe that in 2022 there will be no fall in GDP in Russia.
At the same time, 30% found it difficult to answer this question.
In addition, 54% expect a difficult situation in the labor market, and more than half - an increase in prices.
Everything will be difficult, but personally we will get out, as people say. But whether they can be trusted in such a matter is another story.
Economist Dmitry Prokofiev comments on these conflicting data in his channel:
“People’s positive assessments of their personal economic situation against the backdrop of a negative assessment of the general state of affairs in the economy, which is called “not taken out of the wind” - they more or less fit in with the assessments given by the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-term Forecasting in its report “The First Steps of the Crisis : in the mirror of the macroeconomic forecast”
“This period (May June) was marked by the beginning of the economic downturn – both in general (at least in the observed industries) and in relation to individual markets.
So, after the effect of "rush demand" was exhausted, trade turnover began to fall. Judging by indirect data (on freight traffic, professional media reports), exports continued to shrink, and private investment in fixed assets began to fall (according to current data on the production of investment equipment).
At the same time, the sharply improved external economic environment ensured a rather powerful influx of income into the economy (which caused an increase in business self-assessments - a noticeable increase in PMI in the manufacturing industries, up to a positive level).
At the same time, the actions of the Government ensured the stability of the functioning of the main systems of the economy (primarily the payment system). As a result, the scale of the recession turned out to be (so far) smaller than expected, and there is no jump in unemployment at all.
Better company expectations and government incentives for "labor-intensive" activities prevented a surge in unemployment. Unemployment estimate for 2022-2023 decreased to 6-6.5%. This, in turn, meant smaller than expected contraction of real wages and, ultimately, consumption of the population.
The decline in retail turnover is estimated at about 7% in 2022, and 1-1.5% in 2023. As a result, the overall decline in the economy in 2022 is likely to be limited to about 7%, in 2023 - 1-1.5% (0.5 percentage points below the March-April estimate).
At the same time, the ruble appreciated sharply, which led to a decrease in inflation. It reached its maximum in April - 17.83% in annual terms, and already in June it is estimated at "only" 16%.
As a result, forecast estimates have improved markedly. Thus, even taking into account the inflationary risks of the second half of the year, inflation in 2022 is estimated at about 15% (5-7 percentage points lower than the March-April estimate), in 2023 - about 7.5% (by 0.5 percentage points). below)"
Considering that the First Steps of the Crisis report was signed by Dmitry Belousov (brother of Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov, who himself gave very accurate assessments of the development of the situation in the Russian Federation), it can be assumed that the government views the situation in a similar way... »