The best paid jobs in South Africa are those requiring ICT skills, while Gauteng workers still earn more than those in the rest of the country.
These are among the findings from a CareerJunction review on the latest salary trends in South Africa, based on actual salary offerings posted between April 2017 and November 2017 on CareerJunction, where more than 20 000 jobs are displayed monthly.
The review focuses on the top 10 most sought-after sectors in South Africa and reveals regional pay gaps for many sectors across Gauteng, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
The sectors covered include: Architecture & Engineering; Medical & Health; Building & Construction; Warehousing & Logistics; Information & Communication Technology; Finance; Marketing; Sales; Admin, Office & Support; and Manufacturing & Assembly.
High demand often goes hand in hand with high prices. This phenomenon is also seen in the job market where professionals are offered higher salaries in Gauteng compared to other regions for the same job, due to the high economic activity and therefore high demand for labour.
According to the salary review, professionals residing in and around Gauteng consistently earn above the national average across all 10 sectors analysed.
Professionals residing in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal mostly seem to earn salaries slightly below average, while in some sectors salaries fall far below average.
In the Western Cape, for example, finance professionals can earn up to 24% below average, followed by construction workers with earnings up to 19% below average and sales professionals with earnings up to 13% below average.
In KwaZulu-Natal, professionals in marketing, construction and engineering can earn between 15% and 20% below average while those in the fields of ICT, warehousing & logistics and sales can earn between 23% and 30% below average.
The best-paid sectors across the 10 analysed sectors are the engineering, financial and ICT sectors.
Best-paid workers within these sectors include civil/structural engineers and technical/business architects as well as financial, IT and plant managers, where salaries range between R48 000 and R69 000 per month for professionals at management and senior management level.
Skills of this sort are not easy to find on the South African job market and, as a result, companies are willing to pay higher salaries to professionals with these skill sets.
ICT skills remain among South Africa’s most sought-after skill sets, particularly software development.
The building & construction sector, as well as the warehousing & logistics sector, saw a jump in salary offerings over the last year, particularly senior-level professionals within these sectors. Building foremen, construction/demolition equipment operators, logistics managers and warehouse packing & packaging professionals saw the highest jump in salary offerings with annual increases of over 43%.
Year-on-year, a slight increase in salary offerings is evident across most ICT occupations too. However, salaries for systems & network administrators as well as IT project managers saw a considerable jump of more than 20% during this period.
On the other hand, salaries for marketing and sales professionals have decreased over the past year.
