The BankservAfrica Take-home Pay Index, which tracks the average nominal take-home pay among four million salary earners in South Africa, has painted a bleak picture for 2023.
While the average nominal take-home pay was 5.6% higher in December 2023 compared to December 2022, rising inflation over this period means salary earners were worse off.
Economist Elize Kruger says, “If you take the average take-home pay for 2023 as a whole, it only increased by 1.2% compared to 2022. And if you then add the fact that we had inflation at 6% average, it’s really very clear that households had a significant erosion of their purchasing power during the course of 2023.”
“That is what we have seen in the likes of stats like retail sales contracting in 2023 and also for instance your passenger car sales contracting during the course of the year, so that disposable income pressure has been evident across the economy.”
BankservAfrika take-home pay index: Elize Kruger
BankservAfrica Take-home Pay and Private Pensions Report for 2023:
