FORMAL SECTOR EMPLOYMENT AND EARNINGS SURVEY, 2016 TANZANIA MAINLAND

The EESs are conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), as mandated by Statistics Act 2015, which empowers NBS to collect, compile and disseminate official statistics in the country. The summary is presented for the six main topical areas namely:- Employment Profile; Wage Rates Profile; Cash Earnings Profile; Annual Wage Bill Profile; Newly Recruited Workers; and Job Vacancies.

Employment Profile

The findings on employment profile reveal an increase in total employment in the formal sector from 2,334,969 employees in 2015 to 2,599,311 employees in 2016; which is an increase of 308,951 employees. The majority of employees are employed in the private sector (1,748,695 private and 850,616 public). Proportion of regular employment has increased from 88.2 percent in 2015 to 92.9 percent in 2016, while casual employment has decreased from 11.8 percent in 2015 to 7.1 under the same span of time. Education industry had the largest share of total employment with 18.5 percent followed by manufacturing industry (18.1 percent); and public administration and defence, compulsory social security industry with 13.6 percent of total employment. It is also indicated that there are more adult employees under regular employment (63.2 percent) compared to youth employees who accounted for 36.8 percent of the total regular employees. With regard to disability status, the results indicate that, there were 3,935 employees (about 0.2 percent of total employment in the formal sector) with various types of disabilities. The results also show that, Dar es Salaam region had the largest proportion of employment, with 31.2 percent of all employees, followed by Morogoro region (10.9 percent) and Arusha region (6.8 percent).

Wage Rates Profile

Regarding the wage rates of employees in the formal sector, the findings show that, overall in 2016, majority of citizen employees (22.9 percent) earned monthly wages between TZS 500,001 and 900,000. In the private sector however, there were more citizen employees in lower wage rates with 17.8 percent earning monthly wages between TZS 150,001 and 300,000 and 14.6 percent earning between TZS 100,001 and 150,000. For the public sector, about 15.3 percent of citizen employees earned between TZS 500,001 and 900,000 and about 8.1 percent earned monthly wages between TZS 300,001 and TZS 500,000. The findings also reveal that, about 4.5 percent of all citizen employees earned TZS 1,500,000 or above, with a slightly larger proportion in the private sector (2.7 percent) than public sector (1.8 percent).
Financial and insurance activities had the highest proportion of employees (33.3 percent) earning wages above TZS 1,500,000 followed by information and communication industry (22.1 percent). Conversely, construction, wholesale and retail trade and repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles activities had larger proportions of their employees in lower wage rates between TZS 150,001 and 300,000.

Cash Earnings Profile

The findings indicate that, overall monthly average cash earnings for employees in the formal sector surged up slightly from TZS 403,729 in 2015 to TZS 448,462 in 2016. Monthly cash earnings in the public sector increased from TZS 1,063,064 in 2015 to TZS 1,243,945 in 2016, whereas in the private sector it increased slightly from TZS 353,589 to 362,400. The results boldly note that, on average, cash earnings for employees in the public sector were three times as much as that of the private sector.
In addition, analysis of monthly cash earnings by sector reveals that, parastatal organizations had the highest monthly average cash earnings of TZS 1,452,326, while profit making institutions had the lowest monthly average cash earnings of TZS 339,229. It is also found that in 2016, financial and insurance activities had the highest monthly average cash earnings of TZS 1,388,070 followed by public administration and defense; compulsory social security with TZS 1,292,652.

Annual Wage Bill Profile

Analysis on annual wage bill indicates that, overall, employers in public and private sectors had collective annual wage bill of TZS 23,637 billion in 2016, with employers in private sector having higher annual wage bill than in the public sector. The largest annual wage bills were incurred by employers in private profit- making institutions amounting to TZS 9,536 billion followed by employers in private nonprofit -making institutions with TZS 5,295 billion. Employers in parastatal institutions, including both non - profit and profit - making institutions had relatively smaller annual wage bills of TZS 662 billion and TZS 236 billion respectively. Results on annual wage bill by industry indicates that, the largest proportion of wage bill were in the education industry with 20.4 percent. Public administration and defence; compulsory social security had the second largest annual wage bill of 16.6 percent.

Newly Recruited Workers

The findings on the newly recruited workers reveal that, total number of newly recruited workers in 2016 was 69,639 of which 34,594 employees filled newly created posts and 35,045 employees filled existing vacancies. The findings also indicate that, among the newly recruited employees, there were more females (19,433) than males (15,161). On the other hand, private sector had more new recruits with 51,251 employees compared to public sector with 18,388. It is further indicated that, occupations of service workers and shop sales workers; and technicians and associate professionals had larger number of new recruits with 15,515 employees and 15,346 employees, respectively. With regard to education qualification, the findings indicate that, number of males with tertiary education are more in the new recruits (8,279 employees) equivalent to 23.7 percent compared to female comprised of 4,559 employees (about 13.2 percent).
Moreover, it is established that, out of the total number of newly recruited employees, the largest proportion, 66.4 percent (46,262 employees) were employed on permanent basis followed by 25.3 percent (17,615 employees) who were engaged on contractual basis.
Job Vacancies
Analysis for job openings in the formal sector shows that, the largest proportion of job vacancies in 2015/16 (63.6 percent) were for technicians and associate professionals, followed by professionals (21.6 percent). The remaining occupations each had less than 5 percent of the total job vacancies. The majority of these jobs, (85.3 percent) did not require any working experience. Vacancies that required prior working experiences of 1-2 and 3-4 years constituted about 10.6 percent and 2.8 percent respectively.
The findings also reveal that, the largest proportion of the reported vacancies (93.3 percent) did not attach any sex preference for the potential candidates. However, 4.4 percent of vacancies preferred male employees compared to 2.3 percent which preferred female employees.