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The Citizen reports that the latest BankservAfrica salary data suggests that the job market is stabilising and that, although salaries increased slightly in February, they are still lower than a year ago.
This is said to illustrate just how difficult the economic environment remains for many companies that have to deal with rolling blackouts, high production costs, high interest rates, and falling demand due to slow growth. According to the BankservAfrica Take-home Index (BTPI), take-home pay recovered slightly in February 2023. The average nominal take-home pay increased to R15,186 in February, the highest level since October 2022, but it remained 1.8% below the R15,469 measured a year ago. The slight increase came after two consecutive months of notable declines in the number of salaries paid into the bank accounts of South Africans. BankservAfrica’s data suggests a few jobs were created in February. “Although it was less than a thousand, stability in the job market is welcomed amid a challenging economic environment. The job market is still recovering from the heavy losses due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic,” economist Elize Kruger observed. “With little indication of a notably different economic environment in 2023, but rather even lower economic growth for 2023 compared to 2022, the job market is likely to remain lacklustre,” Kruger added. She said BankservAfrica’s data confirmed the negative impact of inflation on salaries, with an 8.3% decline in the average real take-home salary in February 2023, compared to a year earlier. The BankservAfrica Private Pensions Index (BPPI) remained flat compared to the previous month at R10,054, 6.2% higher than a year earlier and slightly above the monthly average in 2022.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Ina Opperman at The Citizen
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