A good portion of people who got promotions didn’t even get pay rises…

In 2015, 46 per cent of workers in the UAE didn’t get a pay rise according to a survey by Bayt.com. 

Now, remember that from July 2014 to July 2015 the cost of living in the UAE inflated by 4.4 per cent. This inflation means that many people effectively had a pay cut in 2015. In fact, only 9 per cent of the survey’s UAE respondents received a pay rise that was above the inflation rate.

Even people who received promotions didn’t all get pay rises in 2015. The survey found that 21 per cent of respondents got a promotion in 2015, but of those boosted employees, only 62 per cent received a pay increase for their new title.

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Plus, only 18 per cent of professionals working in the UAE believe that their salary is competitive, and 64 per cent of them believe their salary is lower than the industry average.

What about 2016? Well, a third of the UAE respondents are expecting a pay rise of up to 15 per cent this year, while 28 per cent do not expect to receive a raise at all. In fact, nine per cent of respondents expect that their salaries will actually decrease in 2015.

*READ MORE: Get prepared for taxes in the UAE says IMF chief*

While 42 per cent of respondents receive annual or biannual pay reviews, 18 per cent of the workers surveyed do not go through formal pay reviews at all.

In good news, 43 per cent of UAE workers said they receive an annual bonus, and only 12 per cent of respondents are thinking of leaving the Middle East in order to find a job with better pay.

That said, with 80 per cent of respondents facing an increase in their rent costs, 29 per cent of them aren’t managing to save anything from their monthly salary.

So what were the best paid industries? The survey found that oil, gas and petrochemicals, banking and finance and airline/aviation were the highest paying industries for UAE respondents.

The survey spoke to 8,158 respondents across the MENA region, but the above statistics are just from the respondents in the UAE.

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