Almost one in three working people in South Africa earn less than the national minimum wage.

This is according to a salary bench-marking survey by Giraffe‚ an automated recruitment platform.

"Reducing poverty and inequality - and boosting employment - have long been on the agenda of South Africa’s development policies and programmes. However‚ South Africa has the highest level of inequality in the world‚ and significant effort will be needed to address this‚" the company said on Tuesday.

It analysed its database of close to one million medium-skilled candidates to generate the salary survey.

The average salary for the majority of working South Africans is R6‚400 a month.

Retail is the biggest industry (employing 18% of the workforce)‚ but is also one of the worst-paying (40% earn below minimum wage).

Banking and IT pay some of the highest salaries‚ but employ only eight percent of the working population.

There is hope for those aiming to earn higher salaries: education.

"Tertiary education is a major driver of salary - with workers with a tertiary qualification earning on average 72% more than people without a tertiary qualification‚" said Giraffe.

The online recruitment platform said its report is relevant for HR departments and small businesses who hire junior to medium-skilled staff and would like to understand market salaries by industry and function.

Siobhan Zurnamer‚ who led the research‚ commented: “Employers - especially small businesses - often don’t know how much to pay their staff and job seekers frequently don’t know what their skillset is worth. We find that the large discrepancies in salaries for equal work to be attributed to the inaccessibility of credible and fair salary reports‚ so we felt compelled to create one.”

Source: TMG Digital.