{"id":849271,"date":"2026-02-01T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=849271"},"modified":"2026-02-02T06:47:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T04:47:36","slug":"how-much-you-need-to-earn-to-be-middle-class-in-south-africa-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/849271\/how-much-you-need-to-earn-to-be-middle-class-in-south-africa-3\/","title":{"rendered":"How much you need to earn to be middle-class in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In South Africa, there is no official definition of the middle class, and estimates vary widely, from as little as R3,700 to as much as R30,000 per month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Determining who constitutes South Africa\u2019s middle class is challenging due to the country\u2019s high unemployment rates and substantial wage disparities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Research on Socioeconomic Policy (RESEP) group at Stellenbosch University suggests that simply using income as a measure of the middle class is insufficient to capture the broader political and social realities of what it means to be middle class in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Middle class is a term that is borrowed from the literature of a developed country. In developed countries, there is a substantial middle layer of society with individuals who are well educated, skilled and earn a good salary,” reported RESEP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, when implementing this idea in highly unequal developing countries like South Africa, a tension arises between the characteristics associated with the middle class in developed-country literature and the middle segment of the income distribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, if you interpret the term literally and use a central measure like a median to define the middle class, you’ll find that South Africans in this group have limited tertiary education, low earnings, and mostly work in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if you classify the middle class by criteria such as education, skilled jobs, and income, this group will be near the top of the income hierarchy, with only a small portion of society \u2013 often 1% to 3% \u2013 above them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To calculate ‘middle-class’ in South Africa, analysts take all salaries in the country and divide them by the number of employed people to find the average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The median income in South Africa is about R5,400, a relatively low figure that renders the term ‘middle-class’ somewhat confusing as an indicator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why the term is broken down into subclasses \u2013 lower, middle, and upper middle class, all reflecting what a person can typically afford based on their earnings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa\u2019s latest labour market data indicates that the unemployment rate decreased to 31.9% in the third quarter of 2025, a drop of 1.3 percentage points from the previous quarter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although this decline is encouraging, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) emphasises that understanding the employment landscape goes beyond this single statistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What you need to earn <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While it’s difficult to classify who exactly falls into the middle-class bracket in South Africa, there are still reliable indicators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stats SA\u2019s latest quarterly employment survey (QES) shows that the average monthly salary in South Africa increased to R29,490 <\/strong>in the third quarter of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This represents a 0.3% increase over the revised R29,402 recorded in the second quarter of the year (previously R29,290).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, Discovery Bank\u2019s latest SpendTrend report categorises middle-income earners as those earning between R100,000 and R350,000 annually, roughly R8,300 to R29,200 per month<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discovery\u2019s estimated range for the South African middle class also aligns with that of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bureau of Economic Research (BER) defines middle-class households as those earning between R5,000 and R20,000 a month<\/strong>, which is slightly below that of research firm Eighty20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eighty20 has reported that middle-income South Africans earn between R8,000 and R30,000 a month<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The World Inequality Database gives a much smaller range, noting that middle-income South Africans (using a median measure) earn anywhere from R3,700 to R3,800 per month, which includes South Africans who don’t receive an income.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defining the middle class in South Africa is widely debated, but data from various authorities gives us a good idea of how much it takes to be included.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":682055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[20486,12923,17573,20798,22190,15826],"class_list":["post-849271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-bureau-of-economic-research-ber","tag-discovery-bank","tag-eighty20","tag-middle-class-2","tag-quarterly-employment-survey-qes","tag-world-inequality-database"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849271"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":849466,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849271\/revisions\/849466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}