A new report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has found that South Africa’s Public Servants are some of the best paid in the world when considering the relative size of the economy.
The report shows that public sector wage increases are the main driver of Government spending rather than increases in employment.
In the last decade, the number of public sector employees rose only by around 100,000.
Public sector employment was close to the OECD average but high when compared to other emerging economies.
“In real terms, per capita remuneration in the public sector rose by 3.1 per cent on average annually, and by 4.1 per cent for Civil Servants with long tenure (more than 10 years) in the last decade,” the report said.
The report said wage negotiations had systematically ended in the grant of above-inflation increases.
The OECD said top Public Service managers earned an average wage corresponding to nine times of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in 2017, while the ratio was below six for the OECD average.
“The remuneration of South African public sector managers is comparable to their counterparts in Norway,” the report said.
“Even for non-management senior officials, teachers and education personnel, South Africa has one of the highest levels of remuneration in terms of GDP per capita,” it said.
Pretoria, 12 August 2020
