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View all search resultsThe ‘mantab’ trap: The middle class ends up running on debt, fumes
Many people today are burning the furniture to keep the house warm, and when the wood runs out, they are buying firewood on high-interest credit.
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Customers are pictured on June 10, 2025, at a shopping mall in the Semanggi area of South Jakarta. (Antara/Luthfia Miranda Putri)
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s we navigate the second week of December 2025, the visual markers of the Indonesian economy appear deceptively robust. Jakarta’s malls are decked out for the holidays, traffic remains gridlocked, and government officials broadcast customary optimism about year-end consumption driving gross domestic product.
However, visual proxies are dangerous illusions.
If we look past the festive veneer and scrutinize the underlying data, a troubling narrative emerges. There is a sharp, widening disconnect between macroeconomic headlines and microeconomic reality.
We are witnessing the silent hollowing out of Indonesia’s consumption engine, driven by a toxic combination of savings depletion and rising debt. The engine is still running, but it is running on fumes.
The myth of the ever-expanding Indonesian middle class has been punctured by cold, hard data. We are still reeling from the demographic shock revealed by Statistics Indonesia (BPS), showing the middle class shrinking from 57.33 million in 2019 to approximately 47.85 million today. These 9.5 million people did not vanish, they slid into the "aspiring middle class": a vulnerable majority now totaling over 137 million.
To understand why, we must look at the labor market. Post-pandemic recovery prioritized quantity over quality. As of 2025, nearly 60 percent of our workforce is trapped in the informal sector, gig workers and daily laborers without job security or old-age benefits. This structural "informalization" has birthed two desperate coping mechanisms.
The first is mantab, short for makan tabungan (eating into savings). Data from the Deposit Insurance Corporation (LPS) confirms a stark divergence: While deposits from high-net-worth individuals soar, savings accounts under Rp 100 million (US$5.992) have flatlined, barely keeping pace with inflation.
