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Rise in take-home pay Bernard Sathekge, The New Age, Johannesburg, 26 March 2015 Take-home pay of employees rose 9% in February compared with a year ago, the biggest increase in five months. The BankservAfrica Disposable Salary Index (BDSI) published yesterday showed increases in disposable income were at 4.8% when taking inflation into account. Formal sector worker disposable salary increases that have outpaced inflation for six months in a row. The data is smoothed on a three month moving average basis and adjusted for both weekly payments and pension payments. The index focuses on the employed and their salary payouts. "Employed consumers are highly likely to continue spending as their disposable salaries allow them to grow their spending faster than inflation. "This is driven by salary increases as well as a lower inflation rate of 3.9% for February which, in effect, also puts money back into people's pockets,", Caroline Belrose, head of fraud and data analytics at BankservAfrica, said. Inflation is at a four-year low, giving the Reserve Bank room to extend the pause in interest rate increases. If the government's initial tabled offer of a 5%-5.8% pay increase for National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) is accepted, workers will be receiving substantially more than inflation. Supporting the index was the latest EY/BER Retail Survey, also published yesterday, which showed that retail sales growth in the first quarter of 2015 improved in line with industry expectations as a result of a recovery in strike-affected incomes. Derek Engelbrecht, retail and consumer products sector leader at EY, said a recovery in strike-affected incomes following the end of debilitating industrial action in the platinum and engineering sectors has been supporting the retail sector since August last year. However, Belrose said while there are no major strikes disrupting the data, one must remember that February last year was right in the middle of the platinum strike and average salaries could have been distorted due to this. "This means that some of the increase is slightly artificial but nonetheless has a positive impact on consumer spending," she said. The actual BDSI stands at R12051 per month in February which is up from R11067 the same period last year. [email protected] From: http://tnaepaper.co.za/ -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
