Here’s how your salary compares with the rest of SA

If you earn a salary of R5,000 or more per month and live in a household of one, then you are in the top 40% of rich South Africans and 60% of the population is poorer than you.

This is according to The World Inequality Database, a tool that lets you calculate how wealthy you are compared to others.

The updated tool also allows users to compare their monthly or annual income with others in different countries.

According to the tool, if you earn a salary of R5,000 per month and live in a household of more than one, then you are in the bottom 38% of South Africans. This means 62% of that population is richer than you.

If you earn a salary of R10,000 per month and live in a household of five people or above, you are also in the bottom 30% — meaning 70% of the population is richer than you.

You can access the tool here.

Unemployment in SA 

Last month, Stats SA revealed that the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2020 increased by 1.7 percentage points to 32.5% compared to the third quarter.

This is the highest since the start of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) in 2008.

Stats SA said the unemployment rate, according to the expanded definition of unemployment, decreased by 0.5 of a percentage point to 42.6% in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to the third quarter.

“The results of the QLFS for the fourth quarter of 2020 show that the number of employed people increased by 333,000 to 15 million, and the number of unemployed people also increased by 701,000 to 7.2 million compared to the third quarter of 2020, resulting in an increase of one million (up by 4.9%) in the number of people in the labour force,” it said.