Prophet Analytics, South Africa labour analytics company providing specialized research and consulting services to a wide range of blue-chip clients, says in a statement the SA government has also deliberately misled South Africans about how much of the national budget is spent on the salaries of civil servants.
Peter Aling (right), a quantitative analyst at Prophet Analytics, says the government is wrong when it states that only 35% of the annual budget is spent on wages. “The true figure is 88%,” he says. He goes on to say the government had also misled analysts by appearing to agree to 5.4% wage increases for civil servants.
Prophet Analytics’ fourth quarter 2012 Labour Market Navigator Report indicates a larger increase in the salaries earned by black civil servants as well as an increase in the amount of civil servants. In the past 10 years, the black civil servants had increased from 42% to 74%. Nearly 40% of South Africa’s highest-earning blacks were now government employees.
Aling says the government used promotion and job re-grading to create sharp rises in black civil servants’ salaries. This result is an increase on average for the remuneration for public sector of 32% higher than that of private sector workers. “If historical rates of progression were maintained, 5.1 million black people would be earning more than the average white person in private business by 2020,” he said. Racial income disparities were steadily, if slowly, closing.
“This is apparent from current census results showing that black incomes grew 10.4% per annum between the censuses, compared to the 6.5% growth in white incomes,” Aling said.
