[imagesource:here]

South Africans have been dealt blow after blow, with load shedding, industrial action, and political instability all piled on top of rising food and petrol prices.

You know the shebang, we’re living it, man.

While Saffas are known to find resilience and strength in humour, there are some people who don’t get to laugh all the way to the bank.

The Bureau of Market Research (BMR) revealed that the personal income divide between South Africans is growing and will only be getting worse, reported BusinessTech.

Per the data, 75% of the employed adult population currently earns below R5 800 per month. That, quite strikingly, makes up only 11% of personal income in our country of around 60,6 million people.

In contrast, 6,7% of the working population earns a taxable income higher than R500 000 or roughly R42 000 a month, according to the tax statistics published by the South African Revenue Service for the 2020/21 tax year.

That means around one million people who earn that amount can consider themselves part of an elite club.

The contrast gets starker when you delve into how around 462 000 people (2,9%) earn more than R750 000 or R63 000 a month, while only 1,6% or 242 000 people earn more than a million a year (R83 300 a month).

On the absolute opposite end of this scale, 30,4 million people, or 55,5% of the total population, live below the upper-bound poverty line of R1 335 a month, per the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice & Dignity Group (PMBEJD).

Jacolize Meiring, the head of household wealth research at BMR, says that this data illustrates the deep divide in South Africa, a country with the highest level of income inequality in the world.

Meiring, having looked into the Research Consumption Consumer Vulnerability Index, reckons it will take at least an additional 18 months for consumers to recover from the impact of the pandemic, per EWN.

Growth will happen, she said, despite all these economic troubles and growing pains.

[source:businesstech&ewn]