The number of Kenyans who earn Sh. 100,000 and above has dropped. This is according to data from the Kenya Bureau of Statistics which shows that only 79,909 were recorded as earning above Sh. 100,000 in 2020. The KNBS data shows that this was a drop of 4,861 earners compared to a rise of 2,234 a year earlier. It was the first drop in a number of years.
Those earning more than Sh. 100,000 accounted for 2.9 percent of the 2.7 million formal workers captured in the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) database. The taxman has consistently questioned the KNBS data showing a measly 2.9 percent of workers are paid Sh. 100,000 and above. KRA points to a larger share of high-income earners whose lifestyles are not in tandem with the taxes they pay or their declared income.
In the previous 2019 year, about 63.4 percent of men or 50,749 of them earned more than Sh. 100,000 compared to 29,233 women in this club, a gap of 21,516, which is roughly maintained in the other income bands. Three-quarters of Kenyans earned a monthly salary of below Sh. 50,000.
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Those paid between Sh. 20,000 and Sh. 29,999 per month, are represented in this group with a population of one million or 36.3 percent of the total salaried workforce of 2.7 million. It also includes the largest absolute number of employees of 781,964 with an income band ranging from Sh. 30,000 to Sh. 49,999 which can be considered the start of the lower middle class earnings threshold. This group has expanded the most in the past five years, adding 113,615 over the period
