Salaries in South Africa – How much companies are paying in 2020

2020 has been a turbulent year for businesses and employees in South Africa with the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown resulting in retrenchments and salary cuts.

While the IT and telecommunications industries have been more shielded from the economic downturn than most other industries, they have not emerged unscathed.

Many IT companies, including EOH, Adapt IT, and Cell C, were forced to implement salary cuts to ensure their financial sustainability.

Many large ICT players, including BCX and Liquid Telecom, have also issued Section 189 notices to employees, which means they are looking at retrenchments.

Considering the impact of the lockdown on companies, it is not surprising that the demand for labour plummeted this year.

According to the CareerJunction Index (CJI), which tracks the labour market in South Africa, the demand for skills across most industries is down significantly since March.

Hiring activity has decreased significantly for ICT and engineering professionals after the lockdown kicked in.

While there has been some recovery, it is slow and many job seekers continue to struggle to find employment.

The September 2020 report highlighted that hiring activity remains at a reduced level for professionals in ICT, cleaning, maintenance and repair, and marketing.

Salaries in South Africa

While recruitment activity is depressed in many industries, many companies are still looking for skills and are employing new staff.

Using its extensive database of job adverts, CareerJunction publishes monthly updates on the hottest jobs and the salaries associated with these jobs.

These “trending jobs” provide an indication of positions that have become more popular in the online job market and have seen a recent spike in demand.

CareerJunction provides a basic salary range – cost to company (CTC) – for these skills in Gauteng, the Western Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal.

The table below shows the average salaries in these three provinces for trending jobs in 2020.

It should be noted that the “from” range does not represent an entry-level salary and that the “to” range does not represent a high-end senior salary.

Instead, these salaries are a typical range of mid-career employees.

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