The dependable monthly salary is the aspiration of freelancers nationwide. It’s also a luxury that a large percentage of the country doesn’t have.

Still, BankservAfrica’s Take-home Pay Index for August says that the average take-home salary in South Africa, on both an annual and on a monthly basis, is improving.

This doesn’t explain why we’re all still broke, but good news overall if you receive a salary.

BusinessTech has more info on the latest stats:

According to Shergeran Naidoo, head: stakeholder engagements at BankservAfrica, the average South African take-home salaries increased by 4.7% in real terms on a year-on-year basis.

This represents the largest annual percentage increase in the BankservAfrica dataset since 2012, he said.

In August, the monthly average real take-home pay reach R14,460 in real terms– 2.7% higher on a seasonally adjusted basis than July.

“However, we expect the rate of increase to slow from the current very high rate,” he said.

If you’re taking home R14 461 at the end of the month then congrats, you’re above average.

This graph maps the changes from a year ago:

According to economist Mike Schussler, the strong increase is due to the continued delay in government backdated salary adjustments over the past few months, which were then paid in July and August.

“Delays in municipal and Eskom salary adjustments also contributed to backdated salary payments in August. The other reason for the large real average take-home increase was the decline in inflation, which enabled higher real increases.”

Inflation unexpectedly declined from 5.1% in July to 4.9% in August. The typical person’s take-home pay (the person in the middle of the earnings distribution) showed an increase of 1.6% after inflation.

Here’s that Index from previous months:

If we put the August data into perspective by taking into account the backdated salaries, then the actual average take-home pay was up by 4,4% since August 2013.

Although, considering that the majority of people who received backpay were from the public sector, the increase may not be evident in other parts of the economy.

Interestingly, Schussler said, the previous record level of take-home pay in November 2017 is 0.5% lower than the new record level set in August 2018.

“One would expect that consumer spending, particularly retail sales, will benefit and remain positive for August and September as the extra take-home pay is likely to aid discretionary spending by consumers,” he said.

“As such, private consumption expenditure in the third quarter will most likely be substantially higher than the second quarter when employees are still in doubt about the rate of salary adjustments and timing of their actual backdated payments.”

Yes, sheeple – don’t save your money, spend it on all sorts of random consumer stuff. Buy that flat screen, you deserve it.

Seriously though, backpay or no backpay, if you haven’t started saving for retirement, you should really get on that.

One last thing – average salary increase is great and all, but it would be even better if property and petrol prices came down a little so that it actually meant something.

[source:businesstech]