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Rabat – Income disparities in Morocco have become so pronounced that public sector employees earn 1.57 times the average wage in the private sector, almost double the gap observed in the European Union.
Compared to 0.7 in the European Union and Central Asia, and 1.3 in the MENA region, the wage disparities between public and private workers in Morocco is fraught with discrimination.
The minimum salary of public workers has increased from MAD 1,586 in 2007 to MAD 2,800 in 2011, before rising to MAD 3,000 dirhams since 2014, revealed Head of the Government, Saad Eddine El Othmani on December 26 in the Parliament.
Though in the private sector, the minimum wages increased by 10 percent from 2011 and 2014, they are yet to parallel those of the public service.
“To date, the salaries of the public sector have exhausted some MAD 106 billion against 66 billion in 2006,” he said.
El Othmani said that the salaries of high officials in the public sector are frozen, including secretaries general of ministries, whose salaries were stagnitized since 1993 while those of central directors have not been augmented since 1997.
The freezing of high wages has helped to bring the ratio between the highest salary and the lowest to 16 in 2015 instead of a ratio of 26 in 2007.
But for El Othmani, this is not sufficient. He said that the government’s payroll has almost doubled in a decade and public workers were putting too much pressure on the state budget.
He promised that in 2018, the Public Service Department (USFP) headed by Mohammed Benabdelkader will conduct a reform to cut down wage disparities.
The results of the 2017 edition of Diorh-Mercer’s survey found that private workers in HR, finance, IT, marketing and sales are on average better paid than industrials, such as logistics, manufacturing and maintenance employees. Pharmaceutical, high-tech, and consumer goods sectors pay better than the equipment and manufacturing sector.
Regarding the salaries of young graduates, the survey also verifies the finding that foreign diplomas are better paid 10 to 20 times more than local degrees in the job market.
But You Are a Woman…
In both the private and the public sectors, Moroccan women earn about 17 percent less than men, a number than has been revealed in a study conducted by the Moroccan Directorate of Financial Studies and Forecasting.
Moroccan women remain affected by significant inequalities in access to employment, clearly demonstrated by the low participation rate of women in the labor market, with only 24.8 percent against 71.5 percent for men by 2015.
According to the study, women remain the most employed in low-productivity sectors. In addition, when at similar academic and professional levels as men, women earn about 17 percent less than their male counterparts.
In the same way, unemployment among urban women with high qualifications remained at a high rate of 21.7 percent in 2015, compared to 12.6 percent for men. Taking into account these inequalities, the new National Employment Strategy (SNE 2015-2025) targets the promotion of decent employment and the strengthening of equality in access to jobs.
