Nearly Half of Kenyan Workers Earn Less Than Sh30,000 Per Month, Report Shows

The number of employed Kenyans earning less than Sh30,000 monthly has grown by 154,945 (14 percent) to 1,279,982, a new report shows.

The number of Kenyans earning below Sh30,000 represents nearly half of the total employed workers captured in government records, according to the report by Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).

The figure equals 46.3 percent of the total 2,765,159 salaried workers recorded in the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) database at the end of 2018.

The data shows that 394,975 workers joined formal employment in the last four years, with 183,061 of them earning less than Sh30,000 per month.

69 percent of the workers pocketing a monthly pay of less than Sh30,000 work in the private sector, indicating that government workers take home higher salaries.

 
Dominant sectors of the economy including education, agriculture, transport, manufacturing, and real estate paid the least. The education sector had the highest number of workers earning below Sh30,000 at 274,152 (21.4 percent) followed by agriculture (247,529).

The income of Sh30,000 is hard to manage, especially for workers in urban areas such as Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru and Eldoret, where everything requires money.

The expenditure per month per adult on food and none-food items averages Sh7,811 nationally, according to a KNBS report on the well-being of Kenyans released last year.

Nairobi residents spend on average Sh4,239 per month on food and a further Sh8,158 on non-food items such as clothing, education, health, transport and rent, the report showed. This represents nearly 50 percent of the Sh30,000 gross earning.