A fair increase would be 10% but I doubt most people will get more than 7 or 8% this year if at all.
If you get a 10% increase and your marginal tax rate is 30%, take off 3% leaving an effective increase of 7%.
Then deduct the inflation of 5.7% and you're down to an effective increase of 1.3%.
Then deduct the increases in your pension/provident fund contributions and you'll be lucky if it balances out at 0%.
If you get 7 or 8% you're more than likely becoming poorer every year like most of us.
Come on guys, you can't categorise provident fund as a tax or an expense.
Its a compulsory investment.
You have to do it
Its tax deductible
You also cant look at this regardless of experience.
Educated, younger people grow fast in earlier years.
As you get more senior it is difficult to achieve good %s even if your performance is good
This is some area I have some expertise both in my corporate career and my own business.
I have a substantial network of Directors etc and I get intelligence into what companies are doing.
First up
* Inflation is relevant but it's never a minimum nor should it be. It helps establish the pot
Anyway what companies generally do is
* They budget around the inflation mark maybe a little less (because new people dont get increases and the sucky people dont deserve increases)
* They do some market analysis to establish a mid point relative to a job
* They then measure people against the midpoint
* They put performance onto the spreadsheet
* They work out what they might like to give people
* These days many companies are giving zero to the poorer performers or those that are overpaid so they have more money in the pot for the others.
THEN most important
* They look at their own financial performance and work out a total pot % increase
* Managers get told they can distribute say a 6% increase in Salary Pot. That means some people could get 15% and some may get 0%. Most will be near the mid point
* This is important - The pot may not be exceeded. You give Joe and extra R100 you have to take R100 away from Pete
* They dont find more money just because it doesnt balance neatly.
* Companies make calculated decisions based on Retention Risk and Impact of Loss. It sounds unfair but tough
Ito of average increases the range I have heard in pot changes are between 4% and 7%. This is across about 10 IT intensive companies.
On its own it means little because of the robbing Peter to pay Paul