Teachers and employees in the financial field dominated the list of highest-paying jobs in Kenya for the year 2020.
The latest Economic Survey Report 2020 published by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) detailed the latest situation in Kenya's job market.
"The highest-paying jobs are concentrated in the private sector, which had 86.2% or 73,099 of all top earners. The public sector, including parastatals, national and county governments employed 11,798 of those taking home the largest paycheques," reads an excerpt from the report.
Kenya's education sector accounted for the lion's share of individuals earning above Ksh100,000, with 17,708 representing administrators, lecturers, and secondary school teachers.
Employees in the financial industry came in second in the list of top earners with 15.33% (11,598), while wholesale and retail traders came in third.
Notably, none of the employees in mining, quarrying and production of undifferentiated goods were tagged in the Ksh100,000-a-month or more category.
Kenyans earning Ksh100,000 or more each month accounted for only 2.9% of the 2.92 million Kenyans currently registered under formal employment.
However, the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has always contested the official data of Kenyans earning above Ksh100,000, highlighting the existence of a larger pool of high income earning Kenyans whose lifestyles do not match the taxes they file each year.
Statistics posted by the Kenya Motor Industry Association (KMI) showed that dealers sold 45 high-end cars between January and March 2020, compared to 26 units a year earlier.
In August 2020, KRA's theory was vindicated when Kenya's rich scrambled to get their hands on the new Land Rover defender, with 15 units of the Ksh21 million-vehicle ordered within a week of its launch.
According to Careerpoint Solutions, the highest paying jobs in Kenya are listed as medicine, finance, politics, marketing, NGO officers (Ksh194,000), Information Technology, lecturers (Ksh500,000),media presenters, engineering (Ksh550,000) and pilots (Ksh1 million a month).
However, the latest KNBS report indicates that nearly half of of the 2.92 million formal workers earned below Ksh30,000 over the year, underlining the problem of Kenya's pay inequality.
78,500 new formal jobs were created in the econnomy last year which is the slowest pace of formal job growth since 2012. further fuelling the current crisis of youth unemployment.
The latest economic survey report also showed that 64.5% (54,681) of men earned more than Ksh100,000 compared to just 30,126 women.
