Getting a job in government is the best gig in town. As we previously reported, South African public sector workers earn 50% more than their private sector peers.
What the public sector actually pays
Public sector employees earn an average R41,200 a month, versus the private sector average of R28,220 (2024 figures).
One in five millionaires works for government
Here’s another shocker: of the roughly 200,000 taxpayers earning more than R1 million a month, 40,000 of them work in government. So one-in-five millionaires in SA work for the government. Also, one-in-five employed people in SA work for government. It’s become a sprawling, sucking squid that will not control itself (there’s no real effort in the latest Budget proposals to trim the public sector).
What, we are inclined to ask, do these 40,000 millionaires in government do for us? It’s a mind-numbing paradox that our socialist champions have produced such massive inequality of earnings. Bear that in mind the next time a politician says it’s time to redistribute wealth.
The graph below from Codera shows there are about 5.5 million taxpayers above the tax-free threshold, and more than a million of those are government employees. “The latest available data show that the roughly 200,000 taxpayers who earn over R1 million per year pay about 45% of the total personal income tax take, with almost 40,000 of those taxpayers working for government.” – Codera.
Where talent is still rewarded
How do you survive these odds? Well it seems that the private sector is still a place that rewards talent, as demonstrated by the fact that there are way more millionaires plying their trade outside government than in it. And that’s a good thing.
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