The construction workers had the highest rise in their wages last fiscal year, earning 12.9 percent more in the last fiscal year, according to the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB).

Salary in the education sector, particularly that of teachers, topped the list with a rise of 10.3 percent, the central bank said. Both wage and salary rose by 8.4 percent in overall.

According to National Salary and Wage Rate Index prepared by the central bank, hike in wages of the construction workers was followed by that of agriculture and industrial workers.

Among the construction workers, wages of those involved in masonry had the higeshest rise at 13.9 percent followed by carpenters at 12.6 percent. The unskilled workers in masonry pocketed more wages than their skilled counterparts, while skilled ones had a higher raise in carpentry.

The report shows male workers earned higher wages than their female counterparts, with the males getting 13.6 percent raise against 11.4 percent of the females.

 “As the country is facing labour shortage for manual works due to mass migration for foreign employment, wages of labourers has surged in the recent years,” said Nara Bahadur Thapa, chief of research department at the NRB.

In the industrial sector, wages of highly skilled workers surged by 10.2 percent but those with the low skill level witnessed lower rise. The wage index has been calculated by categorising industrial workers into highly skilled, skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled. Among the agriculture workers, wages of male labourers surged by 10.1 percent while female workers saw their wage rise by just 5.3 percent in the last fiscal.

As far as the salary index is concerned, salary of the civil servant followed that of those involved in the education sector. Civil servants witnessed 10 percent rise in their salaries. The non-officer level civil servants had a higher rise than those at officer level. Salary index covers the rise in both actual salary and allowances, according to.

The public corporation witnessed the third highest rise in salary, followed by army and police forces, and banks and financial institutions (BFIs).

The BFIs, who used to have the highest rise salary until the recent years, saw their salary index constrained by low job creation in the sector of late due to merger process. “In the past, when the BFIs were proliferating, they used to compete for best human resources with lucrative pay offers,” said Thapa.

In all these institutions, salary index of the non-officers rose higher than that of officers while that of the private institutions remained unchanged in the last fiscal, according to the NRB.