Salaries in the logistics management, electrical engineering, risk management, management accounting and credit management have been revealed as among the ‘biggest winners’ in a recent survey studying salary offers across sectors.
The recently released Pnet Job Market Trends Report November 2024 showed that these job roles, experienced salary increases of between 35% and 48% between 2021 and 2024, in a period when most salaries in South Africa have stagnated, falling well below inflation.
The report also examined the biggest winners and biggest losers in terms of salary offers over the last three years.
The report said that the fluctuations in salary offers depend on two factors, including demand for labour and supply of labour.
"Naturally, skills and professions that are high in demand with a limited supply pool tend to receive higher salaries compared to professions with an oversupply of talent and little demand," the report said.
Biggest winners
To allow for a fair comparison, all of the professions that were analysed for the report were based on advertised vacancies for intermediate-level job roles based in Gauteng.
Job roles that are outside of Gauteng as well as junior or senior level job roles were excluded from the sample.
Here are the top five winners in terms of salary offers:
- Logistics Management: salary offers increased by up to 48%
- Electrical Engineering: salary offers increased by up to 45%
- Risk Assessment: salary offers increased by up to 43%
- Cost & Management Accounting: salary offers increased by up to 37%
- Credit Management: salary offers increase by up to 35%.
The demand for Warehousing & Logistics professionals has been on the rise with year-on-year demand increasing by 5%, while over a three-year period (2021–2024), demand for these professionals has increased by 16%.
In particular, demand for Logistics Management professionals has increased by 22% over the last three years.
For 2021, professionals in logistics management were offered between R29,000 and R47,000 on average per month. Now in 2024, logistics managers can expect to be offered between R43,000 and R56,000 on average per month.
Looking at this, the trend it is clear that companies are willing to offer up to 48% higher salaries in comparison to three years ago to attract skilled and qualified Logistics Managers.
Industry with low salary offers
Here are the top five losers in terms of salary offers:
- IT Project Manager: salary offers decreased by up to 30%
- Software Developer: salary offers decreased by up to 16%
- HR Officer: salary offers decreased by up to 14%
- Business Analysis: salary offers decreased by up to 13%
- Personal Assistant: salary offers decreased by up to 12%.
The demand for IT professionals has been on the decline over the last three years.
Year-on-year, the IT sector has seen a decline of 21%, and over the past three years recruitment activity in this sector has dropped by 40%.
The decline in local demand for IT professionals has been driven by the global trend of tech layoffs, according to the report.
The report said that retrenchments and job cuts by global giants in the IT sector were first announced at the end of 2022, with companies like Google, Amazon and Meta reducing their tech staff counts significantly back then. Now this trend has continued and is still prevalent in 2024.
"Google and Amazon are still on the list when it comes to tech layoffs, but other companies like Tesla, TikTok, Microsoft and other companies are also decreasing their tech staff size in 2024," the report said.
The report said that the demand for IT Project Managers dropped by 30% over the last three years.
Salary offers for IT Project Managers declined from about R54,000 to R80,000 per month on average in 2021, to R44,000 to R56,000 per month on average in 2024.
According to the report, due to the decrease in demand for IT Project Managers, the average salary offers dropped as companies need to be less competitive when looking for these professionals.
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