The National Minimum Wage for Domestic Workers in South Africa: What You Pay From 1 March 2026

From 1 March 2026, the National Minimum Wage for a domestic worker in South Africa is R30.23 per ordinary hour worked. That is the same rate that applies to every other worker in the country. There is no longer a separate, lower floor for the domestic worker sector — that distinction was removed on 1 March 2022, when the domestic worker minimum wage was equalised with the National Minimum Wage. The 2026 figure reflects the annual increase gazetted by the Minister of Employment and Labour earlier this year.

Most of what you actually need to do with that number is straightforward. The trouble is that it sits inside a small bundle of related rules — daily minimums, ordinary hours, public holidays, leave — and it is the bundle, not the number, that creates the uncertainty most South African households feel when they sit down to work out what to pay.

This post is a clean walk through the bundle. What the floor is. How the rules around it work. How to translate an hourly rate into a monthly figure. And what the floor does not cover, so you know where your own judgement actually starts.

What the National Minimum Wage Is, and What It Is Not

The National Minimum Wage Act sets the lowest amount a worker may be paid for an hour of ordinary work in South Africa. It applies to every employee unless the worker is specifically excluded by the Act, and domestic workers are not excluded. Since 1 March 2022, when the equalisation took effect, the rate is the same whether the person works in a kitchen, a factory, an office, or a farm.

The figure that came into force on 1 March 2026, gazetted by the Minister of Employment and Labour in February 2026, is R30.23 per ordinary hour. That is an increase of R1.44 from the previous rate of R28.79 per hour, which applied from 1 March 2025 to the end of February 2026. The Act sets the rate annually, so this number will move again on 1 March 2027. It is worth diarising the date.

What the National Minimum Wage is not is a recommendation. It is a floor. Paying below it is a breach of the Act, and the Department of Employment and Labour can act on it through inspectors, compliance orders, or the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration. Paying at or above it is compliance. Paying meaningfully above it is your decision, made above the floor, and we will get to that.

What R30.23 an Hour Translates Into

For most households, the question is not really what the hourly rate is. It is what the monthly figure should look like, given how the worker in your home actually works. There are two ways to arrive at that, and they give slightly different answers depending on your arrangement.

For a full-time domestic worker on a five-day week, the standard calculation is forty-five ordinary hours per week, which is the maximum ordinary working week under the Basic Conditions of Employment Act. At R30.23 per hour, forty-five hours comes to R1,360.35 per week. Across an average four-and-a-third week month, that works out to roughly R5,895 per month at the floor. If you pay her for a more typical forty-hour week, the monthly floor sits closer to R5,240.

For a part-time arrangement, the maths is simpler. Multiply the hours she actually works in a week by R30.23, then by the number of weeks in the month. A worker who comes in twice a week for eight hours each day works sixteen hours a week. At R30.23, that is R483.68 per week. Across a four-week month, the monthly floor is R1,934.72.

There is one extra rule that catches a lot of households. Under the BCEA, no worker may be paid for less than four hours on a day she has come in to work. So if your domestic worker travels in for what was meant to be a two-hour job, the daily minimum is still four hours, which at R30.23 per ordinary hour is R120.92. That is the smallest amount you may pay her for a working day, regardless of how short the actual task turned out to be. The point of the rule is that her travel time and her commitment of the day to you have a real cost, and the law builds that cost into the floor. 

Where the Floor Stops, and Your Judgement Begins

The floor covers ordinary hours of ordinary work. It does not cover overtime, which under the BCEA is paid at one and a half times the ordinary rate, or two times on a Sunday or a public holiday she works. It does not cover anything you choose to do above the minimum — a higher hourly rate, a thirteenth cheque, a transport allowance, a gift at Christmas, a contribution to her child's school fees. Those are decisions you make as the employer, in your own household, based on what you can sustainably afford and what kind of long-term relationship you want.

The reason this distinction matters is that a lot of households conflate the two. The fairness question, sitting at a kitchen counter on a Friday afternoon, often slides into a vague worry that whatever you are paying is somehow not quite enough. The floor is what stops that question from being open-ended. Below R30.23 an ordinary hour, the law says no. Above it, the conversation is yours. You can have it with a clear head, because the baseline is not also up for debate every month.

The floor is also not a recommendation about how a fair domestic working relationship feels. It is the legal minimum. Many households pay above it for reasons that are entirely their own — to retain a person they trust, to recognise long service, to compensate for travel, to acknowledge specialised work like cooking or caring for a small child. The Act does not prevent any of that. It only prevents going below.

How the National Minimum Wage Interacts With UIF, Leave and Payslips

The National Minimum Wage is one piece of a slightly larger compliance picture, and it is worth seeing the pieces together so you know which rule does which work.

UIF — the Unemployment Insurance Fund — applies to any domestic worker who works twenty-four hours or more a month for the same employer. The contribution is two percent of her remuneration: one percent deducted from her wage, one percent paid by you on top. The remuneration figure for UIF is broad — it includes her wage, leave pay, overtime pay, and bonuses, and is capped at a monthly remuneration ceiling (R17,712, well above most domestic worker wages). UIF is a separate Act and a separate rate. It does not move when the National Minimum Wage moves.

Leave entitlements come from the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and apply regardless of whether you pay at the floor or above it. A full-time domestic worker is entitled to twenty-one consecutive days of paid annual leave per leave cycle, three days of paid family responsibility leave per year, and the equivalent of six weeks of paid sick leave across a thirty-six-month sick leave cycle. Her wages do not change because she is on leave. Annual leave is paid at her ordinary rate.

The payslip is where all of this becomes visible. The BCEA requires you to give her a payslip every payday, in writing, with her gross pay, her UIF deduction, any other deductions, and her net pay set out clearly. The hourly rate on the payslip should be at or above R30.23 from 1 March 2026 onwards. The payslip is the document that turns the rules into something both of you can point to.

What Most Households Get Wrong About the National Minimum Wage

If you are reading this, you are almost certainly already paying above R30.23 an hour. Most middle-to-upper income households in South Africa pay close to twice the floor, and that is the right baseline for the conversation. The errors worth flagging are not the ones that happen at the floor. They are the ones that quietly happen above it.

The most common is assuming a generous hourly rate makes the rest of the bundle optional. The National Minimum Wage is one rule among five or six. Paying R50 an hour and skipping the UIF deduction is not compliance. Paying R55 an hour without a written payslip is not compliance. Paying her for what she actually works without honouring the daily four-hour minimum is not compliance. The floor and the bundle are two separate things, and a higher rate does not exempt you from any of the others.

The second is a particular trap of the above-the-floor household: paying generously, but in cash, with no payslip and no UIF deduction. The generosity is real, and she often prefers it in the short term — more money in hand, less admin. The trap is that the absence of a paper trail does not protect her, and it does not protect you either. If her job ends and she has no UIF contribution history, she cannot claim. If a disagreement arises about what was agreed, neither of you has a document to point to. Paying above the floor does not substitute for paying in a way the law can see.

The third is a maths error that catches careful households out. Overtime is one and a half times her ordinary rate, and Sunday or public holiday work is two times her ordinary rate. Her ordinary rate is whatever you actually pay her — not the National Minimum Wage. If you pay R55 an hour and she works a Sunday, you owe R110 an hour for that day, not R60.46. The multiplier moves with her rate, not with the legal floor.

The fourth is structural rather than financial. Because the rate sits well above the floor, households tend to think of the wage as a personal kindness — something the employer chose to offer. That framing makes the wage feel ungovernable: no contract, no payslip, no written record of what was agreed. When something changes — a year of inflation, a switch from full-time to part-time, a disagreement about hours — there is nothing to refer back to. A wage above the floor is still a wage. It needs the same paper trail as a wage at the floor does.

The fifth is silent. On 1 March each year, the floor moves. For households paying at the minimum, the increase is automatic because the law requires it. For households paying above the floor, the increase passes them by — and most never even open the question of whether to lift her wage in line. The law does not require a raise if her rate already sits above the new floor. But the annual gazette is a cue worth using: a moment to look at her rate against inflation, against the new floor, and against what you set last year.

The sixth is the cost of getting to her job. The wage you set two or three years ago is doing different work now. Petrol moved from R21.77 a litre in January 2024 to around R24.38 in May 2026, with most of that landing in a single R2.09 spike across April and May this year. SANTACO raised national taxi fares by roughly ten percent in July 2025, and another round has been signaled for 2026 — R3 to R6 per leg on short routes, R10 to R30 on long-distance ones. For a domestic worker on a typical commute, monthly taxi spend now sits between R1,000 and R1,500, which has shifted from a tolerable line item to a meaningful share of her take-home in the space of two years. The wage rate is one variable; her commute is another. Treating them as the same number — or never breaking out a transport line at all — is the error. A small, separate transport allowance, reviewed at least once a year against the petrol price, is what stops the wage you set from quietly shrinking.

When the Floor Is Settled, the Mental Load Lifts

There is a quieter point worth making before we close, which is that knowing the floor — really knowing it, not guessing — takes a particular kind of weight off the household.

Most South African mothers carrying the admin of a domestic working relationship have a low, persistent worry humming underneath. It surfaces when the wage discussion comes up, when a friend mentions what she pays, when a tax year ends, when a conversation about a raise is on the cards. The worry is rarely about a specific number. It is about not being sure whether the number you have settled on is defensible. That uncertainty is what makes the admin feel heavy.

A clear floor settles that. R30.23 per ordinary hour from 1 March 2026 is not your invention, and it is not your call. It was set by the Minister, gazetted in February, and applies the same way to every household in the country. You did not have to defend it. You only have to meet it. Above it, your judgement lives. Below it, there is no judgement call to make. That clarity is the whole point.

The system, when it is working, is the relief. The payslip with R30.23 on it (or higher) is not a chore. It is the line that ends the question.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the National Minimum Wage for a domestic worker in South Africa in 2026? From 1 March 2026, the National Minimum Wage for a domestic worker is R30.23 per ordinary hour. The rate applies equally to all workers in South Africa, including domestic workers, since the 2022 equalisation.

2. How is the domestic worker minimum wage calculated per month? Multiply the ordinary hours she works in a week by R30.23, then by the number of weeks in the month. For a full-time forty-five-hour week, the monthly floor is approximately R5,895. For a forty-hour week, it is approximately R5,240. For part-time work, multiply her actual weekly hours by R30.23 and then by four to four and a third weeks per month.

3. What is the daily minimum pay for a domestic worker? The daily minimum is four ordinary hours at R30.23, which is R120.92. Even if the work that day takes less than four hours, she is owed at least four hours.

4. Does the National Minimum Wage apply to part-time domestic workers? Yes. The Act applies to every hour of ordinary work, regardless of whether the worker is full-time or part-time. The four-hour daily minimum also applies to a part-time worker who has come in for a working day.

5. What is the difference between the National Minimum Wage and UIF? The National Minimum Wage sets the lowest hourly rate you may pay. UIF is a separate two percent contribution toward the Unemployment Insurance Fund — one percent from her wage, one percent from you — and applies whenever she works twenty-four hours or more a month for you. They are independent rules, set by different Acts.

6. What if I pay above the National Minimum Wage already? You are compliant. The floor is the lowest figure allowed. Anything above it is a decision you make as the employer, and many South African households pay above the floor for retention, length of service, specialised work, or transport considerations.

7. When does the National Minimum Wage change again? The rate is reviewed annually by the Minister of Employment and Labour and gazetted before 1 March each year. The next review is due before 1 March 2027.

Sources

1. National Minimum Wage from 1 March 2026, R30.23 per ordinary hour — Minister of Employment and Labour announcement, South African Government: https://www.gov.za/news/media-statements/minister-nomakhosazana-meth-increases-statutory-national-minimum-wage-r3023

 2. National Minimum Wage equalisation for domestic workers, 1 March 2022 — Labour Research Service: https://lrs.org.za/2022/03/02/national-minimum-wage-domestic-workers-reached-equalisation-now-what/

 3. Basic Conditions of Employment Act, daily four-hour minimum and overtime rules — Department of Employment and Labour: https://www.labour.gov.za/DocumentCenter/Acts/Basic%20Conditions%20of%20Employment/Act%20-%20Basic%20Conditions%20of%20Employment.pdf

 4. National Minimum Wage Act No. 9 of 2018 — South African Government: https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201811/national-minimum-wage-act9-of-2018.pdf

If you would like a calmer way to keep the hourly rate, the daily minimum, the UIF, the leave records, and the payslip all in one place — the kind of structure that makes the floor visible every month without you having to recalculate it — The House Keeper was built for exactly this. Sign up for a free account today.