13 January 2020
- Statistics Office releases new estimates of average gross incomes from employment for the 2018/19 financial year
- Estimated median annual before-tax income fell to £8,410 – a fall of just under 5% compared to 2017/18, when inflation is taken into account
The Statistics Office has today released new estimates of average gross incomes from employment for the 2018/19 financial year, including slight revisions to the estimates for previous years. The estimated median annual before-tax income fell to £8,410. Although this is a decrease of just under 1% compared to the previous year, between 2017/18 and 2018/19 prices rose on average by 4.1% and when this is taken into account the ‘real’ level of wages fell by 4.8%.
The number of people above the income tax threshold from earnings from employment also fell, from 1,591 in 2017/18 to 1,448 in 2018/19. Less tax-payers and lower average incomes will tend to reduce tax revenues, which will have a knock-on impact on the services that Government can provide. A larger working age and tax paying population on St Helena will be more conducive to an increase in economic activity and social prosperity – the 2020 Labour Market Strategy warns of the risks of a smaller working age population and provides measures to reduce the negative impacts on the economy, Government revenues and public service provision.
The estimates are derived from records maintained by the Income Tax Office using methodology consistent with previous releases; this year an improvement has been made to better eliminate part-year incomes from the analysis. Estimates measure gross before-tax incomes (wages) of persons in regular employment on St Helena, reported through the Pay-As-You-Earn system. They exclude company and self-employment incomes, incomes of Technical Cooperation Officers, investment income, and other sources of income such as benefits or the Basic Island Pension. They also exclude part-time and part-year incomes, as far as they can be identified. All annual estimates are rounded to the nearest £10.
More detailed statistics on incomes, including the differences between lower and higher paid employees, and the differences in incomes between men and women, are available in the latest Statistical Bulletin No. 1 for 2020 here:
https://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Stats-Bulletin-1-2020-Wages.pdf
A data file (Incomes.xls) is available at: http://www.sainthelena.gov.sh/statistics/
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SHG
13 January 2020