South Africans who earn R30,000 or more a month are responsible for 87% of all personal tax, so if these people are in trouble then the country is in real trouble.
And with this group of people under increasing financial strain and seemingly leaving our shores, there is a reasonable belief that all hope is lost.
But what if this is not true? What if there is actually reason to believe that the country has the right group of people to help drag it into a better future?
Brandon de Kock, director of storytelling at consumer insights consultancy WhyFive, believes there are such reasons, and that these exist within South Africa’s middle-class, or mid-market as it is referred to by many data handlers.
“The middle class has been amazingly resilient. They are still filling restaurants, they bounced back after Covid, and they can still send their kids to school.”
He classifies the mid-market as 25% of South Africans – a total of 10 million people, who earn more than R10,000 a month. The top 5% of South Africans is a group of three million people who earn upwards of R40,000 a month.
In his BrandMapp data presentation titled Shifting sands: how SA’s middle market has changed in the past 10 years, De Kock theorises that education is the trigger. Education, he says, is the fertilizer needed to spur any economic growth or success in life, and in South Africa, the top 30% of earners – a total of 13 million people who earn more than R10,000 a month – are “obsessed” with education.
Comparing education levels in 2014 with those of last year, and considering the population has grown by 10 million people in that time, he says there has been a “fairly fundamental shift”.
“And when things shift like this as fast as they do, we are going to see big shifts in the demography in the country; underpinning this is education. The role of education cannot be exaggerated enough.”
Explaining the above graphic, he states that, in 2014, one needed a post-graduate degree to be in the top end of earners, or, to be in the top end of earners, one needed to have a post-graduate degree.
“So what has happened in the past 10 years, is that the top end has just become more radically highly educated. And the mid-market has also kept pace, so this means that the level of education is just getting higher. This is what is pulling this group of people up.”
He cites these figures from the Department of Higher Education and Training to further prove his point:
We don’t celebrate these stories enough, he says.
“We need to share things like this to give us hope and show us what potential there is if things change (fundamental political change in the country).”
In 2010, just over 13% of the total working population of South Africa had a certificate, diploma, or degree. Now, we are closer to 15%.
“This may be a small percentage but in a country of 43 million adults, a 2% shift is important.”
This change equates to 860,000 people.
In addition, De Kock points out that there are now an extra R500,000 people in the workforce with degrees.
“What this leads me to believe is that education itself is perhaps not an advancement to the middle-class continuum, but, rather, higher education is.
“Just having a matric is not going to cut it anymore.”
He adds that, in 10 years, the number of adults who have a tertiary education has grown by 1,2 million.
Only 1% of unemployed people have a tertiary degree; 90% have no tertiary education.
“This is a frightening number in itself, but if we look at it in a positive way, we have about 600,000 people in South Africa who now have an education and are waiting for something to happen that will give them jobs. Education is massive.”
The higher one’s level of education, the more chance there is to achieve a higher level in business, De Kock says.
“The steps of the corporate ladder are paved with certificates. We need more people to achieve higher levels of education.”
IOL Business