South Africa minimum wage
The National Minimum Wage under the National Minimum Wage Act 9 of 2018 — a statutory floor per ORDINARY HOUR WORKED (not a monthly or weekly figure), applying to all workers in South Africa subject to the Act's exclusions. Reviewed annually by the National Minimum Wage Commission and adjusted by the Minister of Employment and Labour under s6(5) of the Act by notice in the Government Gazette, conventionally effective 1 March.
| Current value | 30.23 ZAR per ordinary hour worked |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2026-03-01 |
| Official source | Department of Employment and Labour, Government Notice No. R. 7083, Government Gazette No. 54075 (Regulation Gazette No. 11941) of 3 February 2026, signed 02/02/2026 by Ms N Meth MP, Minister of Employment and Labour, in terms of s6(5) of the National Minimum Wage Act No. 9 of 2018, amending Schedules 1 and 2 as published under Government Notice No. 52053 of 4 February 2025, binding from 1 March 2026 — Schedule 1 item 1: 'Subject to item 2, the national minimum wage is R30,23 for each ordinary hour worked.' |
| Last verified | 2026-07-24 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
Verified against the gazette text itself, not a summary. R30,23/hour from 1 March 2026, up from R28,79 (a R1,44 / ~5.0% increase). This is an HOURLY floor — there is no national monthly minimum wage in South Africa; monthly equivalents circulated by payroll vendors are derived (e.g. R30,23 x 45h x 4.333 weeks = ~R5 894/month for a full 45-hour week) and are not themselves statutory. CARVE-OUTS AND LOWER RATES, verbatim from Schedule 1 item 2 of GN R.7083: (a) farm workers R30,23/hour and (b) domestic workers R30,23/hour — these two categories reached parity with the headline NMW in 2022/2023 and are no longer discounted; (c) workers employed on an EXPANDED PUBLIC WORKS PROGRAMME (EPWP) are entitled to a minimum of R16,62 per hour (up from R15,83) — this is the one materially lower rate and is roughly 55% of the headline NMW; (d) workers under learnership agreements per s17 of the Skills Development Act 97 of 1998 receive weekly ALLOWANCES on an NQF-level/credit matrix, not the hourly NMW: NQF 1-2 R455,00 to R909,94/week; NQF 3 R455,00 to R1 402,87; NQF 4 R455,00 to R2 047,41; NQF 5-8 R455,00 to R2 654,04. The same gazette also re-fixes SECTORAL DETERMINATION minimums that sit ABOVE the NMW: Sectoral Determination 1 (Contract Cleaning) R33,27/hour in Area A (Cape Town, Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg, Tshwane, Nelson Mandela metros and listed local councils), R30,33/hour in the rest of the RSA, with KwaZulu-Natal governed by the BCCCI bargaining-council agreement; and Sectoral Determination 9 (Wholesale and Retail) with per-job-category rates from R30,23/hour (general assistant, Area A) up to R64,66/hour (manager, Area A). EXCLUSIONS from the Act itself: members of the SANDF, the State Security Agency and the National Intelligence Agency, and volunteers. Employers may apply to the Commission for exemption (capped at 10% below the NMW for a maximum of 12 months). Enforcement is by Department of Employment and Labour inspectors; failure to pay attracts a fine of twice the underpayment or twice the worker's monthly wage, whichever is greater. Next adjustment expected effective 1 March 2027, normally gazetted late January/early February. Access note: the gazette PDF at gov.za is text-extractable but returns raw PDF streams to naive fetchers — extract with a PDF parser, not an HTML-to-markdown converter. SECTORAL FLOORS (added 2026-07-27): the statutory floors set by sector, occupation and area are now served as structured data and can be priced through /v1/answers/wage-check by passing the schedule key. Operative instrument: Government Notice R. 7083 in Gazette 54075 of 3 February 2026, binding from 1 March 2026. DO NOT assume the historical differentials survive - farm workers and domestic workers keep their own Schedule 1 items but are now set at parity with the general rate, and EPWP is the only remaining sub-national differential. Learnership allowances are set per WEEK and banded by NQF level and credits earned; they must never be compared against the hourly figures. Two sectoral determinations amended in the same notice set floors ABOVE the national minimum: Sectoral Determination 1 (Contract Cleaning), served here, and Sectoral Determination 9 (Wholesale and Retail), a large area-by-category matrix NOT yet extracted and therefore not served. Contract cleaning Area B (KwaZulu-Natal) carries NO gazetted figure - the notice defers to the Bargaining Council (BCCCI) collective agreement. Beyond the gazette, bargaining council agreements set higher binding floors in specific industries and are extended to non-parties within their scope. An employer's true floor is the HIGHEST of the national minimum wage, any applicable sectoral determination and any applicable bargaining council agreement; this dataset does not resolve that hierarchy for the caller.
Earlier values
| From | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-03-01 | 28.79 | Department of Employment and Labour, Government Notice No. 5 |
Get it programmatically
curl https://afriref.dev/v1/za/minimum-wage
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://afriref.dev/v1/za/minimum-wage/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/za/minimum-wageOther South Africa series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates · official exchange rates · statutory interest rate · VAT registration threshold · withholding tax rates