Zambia minimum wage
Zambia has NO single national minimum wage. Under section 106 of the Employment Code Act, 2019 (Act No. 3 of 2019) the Minister of Labour and Social Security fixes minimum wages and conditions of employment by Statutory Instrument for separate classes of worker — a General Order, a Shop Workers Order, a Domestic Workers Order, and sector orders (e.g. truck and bus drivers). Each order sets a schedule of numbered categories with an hourly and a monthly minimum BASIC pay, plus statutory allowances on top. The orders do not apply to civil servants, local-authority employees, management, unionised employees covered by collective bargaining, or anyone whose terms are already more favourable.
| Current value | structured — see the API |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2024-01-01 |
| Official source | Statutory Instruments No. 48, 49 and 50 of 2023 made under s.106 Employment Code Act 2019 (Supplement to the Republic of Zambia Government Gazette dated Friday, 24th November 2023, pp. 293-308; signed B. M. Tambatamba, Minister of Labour and Social Security, Lusaka, 20 November 2023; all three commence 1 January 2024) — SI 48 (General) scanned text published by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security; SI 49 and SI 50 gazette text via ZambiaLII |
| Last verified | 2026-07-24 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
ESTABLISHED POSITIVELY: there is no single Zambian minimum wage figure. The widely-quoted 'K2,313.10 per month' is NOT a statutory rate — it is the GROSS pay of a Category I general worker, i.e. K1,487.00 basic + K200 transport + K180 lunch + 30% housing allowance (K446.10). The statutory number is the BASIC pay of K1,487.00 (K7.15/hour); everything above it is allowance. Serving K2,313.10 as 'the minimum wage' will be wrong for any worker who is accommodated by the employer, lives within 3km of work, or is fed at work. STRUCTURE: three general orders (SI 48 General, SI 50 Shop Workers, SI 49 Domestic Workers, all effective 1 Jan 2024) plus sector orders; SI 48 revoked the Minimum Wages and Conditions of Employment (General) Order 2011 (S.I. No. 2 of 2011), SI 49 revoked the Domestic Workers Order 2011 (S.I. No. 3 of 2011) and SI 50 revoked the Shop Workers Order 2011 (S.I. No. 1 of 2011) — so the 2024 orders were the first general revision in over a decade. NOTE the two orders' category numbering does NOT line up: General Category II is a security guard at K1,487.00, while Shop Workers Category II is a sales assistant at K1,801.98. MOST RECENT CHANGE: SI No. 3 of 2025 (gazetted 10 January 2025, signed 31 December 2024, in operation on the expiration of three months after gazetting, i.e. 10 April 2025) raised truck drivers to K4,000/month and bus drivers to K3,000/month basic. NO revision has been made in 2026: as at confirmation the Ministry of Labour and Social Security had published no further minimum-wage SI (its media library's most recent wage instrument is SI 3 of 2025). Coverage exclusions matter: the orders do not apply to the civil service, local authorities, management, unionised staff under a collective agreement, or any employee already on better terms. HISTORY is left empty deliberately — the pre-2024 rates sit in the 2011 orders as amended, which are not published in machine-readable form by any Zambian government site, and unverified figures are not served. ACCESS NOTES: mlss.gov.zm has a broken TLS chain (WebFetch: 'unable to verify the first certificate') and its SI PDFs are image-only scans with no text layer — SI 48's schedule had to be read off the page images. ZambiaLII's source PDF for SI 48 (zambialii.org/akn/zm/act/si/2023/48/eng@2023-11-24/source.pdf) and the ILO NATLEX copy are both TRUNCATED to the first two gazette pages and omit the wage schedule entirely; do not rely on them. SI 47 of 2023 is NOT the Shop Workers Order (it does not exist on ZambiaLII) — the Shop Workers Order is SI No. 50 of 2023 (https://zambialii.org/akn/zm/act/si/2023/50/eng@2023-11-24).
Get it programmatically
curl https://afriref.dev/v1/zm/minimum-wage
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://afriref.dev/v1/zm/minimum-wage/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/zm/minimum-wageOther Zambia series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates