{"id":840484,"date":"2025-10-21T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=840484"},"modified":"2025-10-21T13:02:44","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T11:02:44","slug":"the-one-province-in-south-africa-that-spends-the-most-on-government-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/840484\/the-one-province-in-south-africa-that-spends-the-most-on-government-employees\/","title":{"rendered":"The one province in South Africa that spends the most on government employees"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Provincial governments spend most of their funding on staff costs, with the Eastern Cape spending the largest share of its expenditure on compensation for state employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent study from Stats SA explored how provincial government wage bills provide insights into how an essential sphere of government spends money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Provincial governments provide essential services, from education and health to infrastructure development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stats SA said that government expenditure can be classified in functional and economic terms, with the former mainly linked to services that the government provides. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to provincial governments, spending is dominated by education and health. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These two functions account for R561 billion (76%) of provincial government expenditure, according to the latest Financial Statistics of Provincial Government Statistical Release. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Education accounts for R315 billion of all spending, while healthcare stands at R245 billion. Economic affairs is in a distant third place, which sits at just R71 billion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not a single other line of expenditure hits over R40 billion, with housing and community amenities sitting at just R22 billion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stats SA said that expenditure is classified according to the nature of the transactions involved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compensation of employees and purchases of goods & services are the line items that take up the largest amounts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 2023\/2024 financial year, provincial government expenses reached R704 billion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compensation of employees was the main cost driver, accounting for 64.0% of all expenditure. This was well ahead of the purchases of goods and services at 26% in second place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at specific provinces, the Eastern Cape provincial government recorded the largest percentage of compensation of employees to total expenses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Limpopo and Free State followed closely, with compensation accounting for 67.1% and 67.0% of total expenditure, respectively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

KwaZulu-Natal, North West, and Mpumalanga also spend over 65% of their expenditure on compensation of workers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other end of the scale, Gauteng, Northern Cape and Western Cape all spend less than 60% their expenditure on compensation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These three provinces spend larger shares of their total expenditure on purchases of goods and services and other expenses.  <\/p>\n\n\n

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Who gets the largest slice<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Looking deeper at the figures, Stats SA provided a breakdown of the R451 billion spent on employees by function. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over half was paid to civil servants working in education, with R120 billion (27%) spent on pre-primary and primary education and R90 billion (20%) spent on secondary education. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Staff in hospital services receive R99 billion (22%), while public health service staff earn R48 billion (11%). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEducation and health are the two leading responsibilities of the provincial government,\u201d said Stats SA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese two mammoth tasks require a large number of teachers, education personnel, nurses, doctors and health care workers.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stats SA noted that the provincial government\u2019s wage bill has grown from R271 billion in 2014\/2025 to R451 billion in 2023\/2024. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This equates to an annual growth rate of 5.8%, lower than the annual growth rate of 7.4% for purchases of goods & services (R98 billion to R186 billion). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The total share of compensation to total expenses over the period also remained within a range of 63.9% to 64.5%.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Stats SA has broken down provincial spending patterns, with all of the nine provinces spending over 50% on staff costs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":840492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1809],"class_list":["post-840484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-stats-sa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840484","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\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840484"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":840508,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840484\/revisions\/840508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}