{"id":294898,"date":"2019-01-23T11:20:51","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T09:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=294898"},"modified":"2019-01-23T11:20:51","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T09:20:51","slug":"this-is-the-average-take-home-pay-in-south-africa-at-the-start-of-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/294898\/this-is-the-average-take-home-pay-in-south-africa-at-the-start-of-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"This is the average take home pay in South Africa at the start of 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

BankservAfrica has published its findings from the first take-home pay index in 2019, providing a review of disposable income in 2018, and where things stand at the start of the new year.<\/p>\n

In December, the average banked real-take home pay was R14,094<\/strong> showing – a 0.5% year-on-year change and a slight improvement from November, according to Shergeran Naidoo, head: stakeholder engagements at BankservAfrica.<\/p>\n

The nominal value was R15,045 or a 5.5% change on December 2017.<\/p>\n

BankservAfrica\u2019s Take-home pay Index tracks about 3 million salary earners every month via about 4 million payments a month paid into the national payments system.<\/p>\n

The Take-home pay Index had a mixed year as many pay negotiations resulted in delayed increases, which in turn resulted in an actual decline in real take-home pay. When the increases were finally paid, some back pay take-home pay shot up and was strongly positive for a few months. This was evident in August when public sector back payments took place.<\/p>\n

However, towards the year-end, it seems that take-home pay declined somewhat as inflation shot up – partly due to massive fuel price increases.<\/p>\n

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Salary increases barely account for inflation<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to Mike Sch\u00fcssler, chief economist at Economists.co.za<\/em>, the dust settled in December when the actual take-home pay improved marginally. Still, at the current rate, it would take 180 years to double a salary in real terms.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“The index had an up and down year as at first, and many pay negotiations resulted in delayed increases, which led to an actual decline in real take-home pay,” Sch\u00fcssler said.<\/p>\n

“When the increases were finally paid, some back pay take-home pay shot up and was strongly positive for a few months. This was evident in August when public sector back payments took place.”<\/p>\n

Take-home salaries (after taxes, pensions and in some cases medical expenses) did, however, beat inflation, marginally.<\/p>\n

The nominal salary increases of 5% was double the shopping inflation rate as retailers kept price increases low. However, higher costs for fuel, medical and utility bills pushed up the average inflation rate to 4.6%.<\/p>\n

The average real take-home pay for the whole of 2018 was R13,990 per month<\/strong> for the person receiving their salary via a bank account (before inflation, the average was R15,018 per month).<\/p>\n

“The weak economy is not helping South Africans get salary increases, although the average increase for the year is just above inflation,\u201d said Sch\u00fcssler.<\/p>\n

“Some salary increases were above 7%, which, after tax and inflation, would have resulted in an estimated 1.8% increase in real after-inflation terms. Many private sector firms, however, remain under pressure resulting in less than inflation increases. Many employees are struggling to maintain their standard of living,” he said.<\/p>\n

A total increase of 1% after tax and pension in take-home pay over five years says that, in essence, salaries were adjusted just for inflation on average, Sch\u00fcssler said.<\/p>\n

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Read:\u00a0This graph shows how the average salary has changed in South Africa over the past 70 years<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BankservAfrica has published its findings from the first take-home pay index in 2019, providing a review of disposable income in 2018, and where things stand at the start of the new year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":205318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-294898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294898"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294908,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294898\/revisions\/294908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}