The number of practising salaried quantity surveyors with more than 10 years’ experience has declined.

This is according to the latest results from the Association of South African Quantity Surveyors annual salary survey.

The survey notes that shows that the number of practising salaried quantity surveyors with more than 10 years’ experience declined from 28.2% to 21.4%.

Tracking emigration is complex

“A knee-jerk reaction could be to attribute this drop in remuneration to the number of experienced quantity surveyors leaving the country, but this hypothesis is difficult to prove for a number of reasons,” the association explains.

One of these is that tracking the emigration rate in South Africa is complex without running a monthly headcount, but a report from Pew Research estimated that at least 900 000 people born in South Africa were living abroad in 2017.

By the time of the next national census in 2021, this could easily be over one million people based on current rates.

“The exact number of educated and experienced Quantity Surveyors who have left the country over the past year, however, remains unknown, the association says.

Not necessarily a downward trend

It adds that while the Quantity Surveying profession has been challenged by a number of changes in the macro environment over the past two years, this year’s drop in remuneration doesn’t necessarily signify the beginning of a downward trend.

“With last year’s annual salary survey, the ASAQS saw a sharp drop in the remuneration of quantity surveyors qualified at university and with more than 10 years’ experience. That seems to have been corrected in this year’s survey, it highlights.

The survey also looked at salary comparisons by province and according to the study quantity surveyors in the Western Cape  receive the highest remuneration at R971 000 per annum, followed by Gauteng at R868 485 per annum, and Limpopo at R 769 374 per annum.