Despite Growing Economic Tension, This Is The Average Take-Home Pay In South Africa Right Now

There are a lot of domestic squabbles centred around the slow growth of South Africa’s economy and some political drama too. But it looks like wages are on the up.

BankservAfrica just released its latest Take-home Pay Index and it turns out South Africa isn’t doing so bad on that front, which comes as a welcome break from all the negative vibes that have been making the rounds lately.

According to the latest Take-home Pay Index, take-home pay reached its highest peak in 10 months in June and beat inflation for the third time in as many months. The real seasonally-adjusted take-home pay as at the end of June is R13,890.

This improved figure may have something to do with the national elections in which took place in May during which an estimated 235,000 temporary salary payments were made to contracted workers.

The latest take-home pay value is based on preliminary information sourced from the IEC. Although the exact number will only emerge when the IEC’s Election Report for 2019 is released, the real number is likely to mirror this especially due to the increase in the number of polling stations.

On the whole, overall total payments in nominal terms rose by over 6 percent in June, checking the dip in total nominal payments made over the last ten months.

Again, this is attributed to the temporary payments to staff who were called upon during the elections. Many were government employees and a good number of them were previously unemployed – or did not have a regular stream of formal income.

Due to this, the overall take-home pay shot up, which the BankservAfrica index reflected in the average take-home pay numbers and percentage change numbers.

Some say that the increase in banked wage income is indicative of a temporary growth in consumer spending for the month of June and there is a feeling that the same could be the case for July given that consumer price inflation is under control.

Data from StatsSA as of Wednesday suggested that annual consumer price inflation was 4.5 percent in June 2019, the same as in May 2019.

In the same vein, consumer price index increased by 0.4 percent month-on-month in June 2019, the stats body’s data showed. This would be the seventh month in a row that year-on-year inflation was at or below the midpoint of the projected figure.

However, the contributors to year-on-year inflation changed somewhat. Food and non-alcoholic beverages, alcoholic beverages, and tobacco, as well as housing and utilities, contributed the most with fairly significant increases.

Month-on-month inflation did increase slightly from 0.3 percent in May to 0.4 percent in June. Food and non-alcoholic beverages, as well as housing and utilities, were the major contributors with small spikes in their prices.

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