December 2021 Cost of Living Expenses Report

Industrial Psychology Consultants carried out a cost of living expenses survey for executives, senior managers, middle managers, officers/Professionals, and National Employment Council (NEC) level employees. The information is represented in the form of averages. Averages can be used for both continuous and discrete numeric data. All costs are given as monthly expenses in Zimbabwe dollar (ZWL$) the employment levels mentioned above unless stated otherwise.

The cost of living is the amount of money needed to sustain a certain standard of living by affording basic expenses such as housing, food, and healthcare. The cost of living is often used to compare how expensive it is to live in one city compared to the other. In everyday situations, salaries and wages have a relationship with the general cost of living. Salaries should reflect the higher cost of living in more expensive cities.

With the surge of the novel COVID-19 pandemic, life worldwide has been a challenge. Social and economic lives have been greatly affected due to the introduction of lockdowns across the globe, including Zimbabwe. According to a report by ZIMSTAT titled, Monitoring COVID-19 Impact on Households in Zimbabwe, N = 1747

• Employment dropped, as one-fifth of the respondents working before the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions lost their jobs. This affected urban and rural areas, and job losses were particularly severe in the retail and other service sectors.
• Half of the urban respondents and two-thirds of rural respondents reported skipping meals or running out of food.
• One-third of the extremely poor could not afford to buy maize meal

The cost of living expenses report is designed to monitor living standards for employees. The survey report provides in-depth information on the living expenses useful in monitoring living standards for employees.