With over 130,000 advertised vacancies currently in South Africa, here at Adzuna Towers, we have a bird’s eye view of the country’s current employment market. Since our last job market update in January, it is exciting to see a slight increase in the number of jobs online as companies start to ramp up their seasonal recruitment efforts across the board. In addition, we have witnessed a decline in average advertised salary and drop in supply of critical skills.
If you’re looking to top-up your pay packet, there are a handful of valuable skills that are being offered more money than the average advertised salary. Skills in the tech sector such as engineers and program developers and trade skills rank the highest in average pay during March 2017. Other popular skills include project managers, business analysts, nurses, most financial-related skills and consultants of all types.
The employment market for sales professionals has just got a little more competitive as the number of roles advertised took a dip in recent months. This was also accompanied by a chunky drop in advertised salaries, although this is nothing to be concerned about as the majority of sales salaries are bolstered by commission or bonuses that would not show up in our reports. What we can learn from this is that employers are placing greater importance on performance in an effort to be more efficient in the current economic market.
Interestingly, this belt-tightening trend can be seen across the board in South Africa over the past nine months. While in July 2016, the average was just shy of R390,000, in March 2017 that has dropped to just under R300,000. Considering the increase in ads for the more highly-paid skills, we suggest that this decrease is a result of an overall drop in salary rather than an increase in lower wages at the bottom end of the earning scale.
This drop in average salary also goes in line with the South African Reserve Bank’s possible plans to reduce interest rates to meet its inflation targeting goals. Financial Advisors, however, are not forecasting a decrease as they believe a drop South African’s spending should curb the current inflation rate, which is still hovering above the required 6%.
What is to come for 2017?
The current situation in the South African employment market suggests that technical skills will increase in demand and pay. This might lead some companies to seek highly skilled technology professionals abroad as it becomes more and more difficult to do so in the South African marketplace.