{"id":851518,"date":"2026-02-19T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=851518"},"modified":"2026-02-20T10:26:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T08:26:37","slug":"another-blow-to-domestic-workers-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/851518\/another-blow-to-domestic-workers-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Another blow to domestic workers in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The latest employment data from Stats SA show that domestic worker jobs in the country continue to decline annually, despite a slight increase in the number of positions filled over the final quarter of 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) for Q4 2025 shows that unemployment fell for the fourth consecutive quarter, with 44,000 more people employed in the country, bringing the total to 17.1 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between Q3 2025 and Q4 2025, the number of employed persons increased in seven of the ten industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The largest increases in employment were recorded in the Community and social services industry (+46,000), followed by the Construction (+35,000), Finance (+32,000) and Agriculture (+30,000) industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decreases in employment were recorded in Trade (-98,000), followed by the Manufacturing (-61,000) and Mining (-5,000) industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Employment in private households\u2014the primary employer of domestic workers\u2014increased by 18,000 or so jobs over the quarter, a rise of 1.6% from Q3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, year-on-year, the total number of jobs declined by 1.5% for a second consecutive quarter, resulting in a 17,000 position decrease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking specifically at domestic worker jobs, the number of domestic workers increased by 7,000 since the third quarter, but the annual data still shows a 0.8% decline\u20147,000 jobs lost year-on-year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tracking the jobs data over a longer period, domestic worker positions haven\u2019t moved higher than the 880,000 mark in almost four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This reflects a permanent loss of around 150,000 domestic worker jobs, or -16%, in the country since the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pre-pandemic (Q4 2019), figures fluctuated around 1 million domestic workers. When factoring in the seasonal variations and potential base, groups like SweepSouth put the figure closer to 1.2 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, since lockdowns ended and the pandemic was declared over, the sector simply never recovered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Various reasons and explanations have been given to account for this, from strained household finances to emigration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Pay increases for Domestic Workers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While it is clear that domestic worker jobs in South Africa are stagnant, there is some good news for those employed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past few years, the government has moved to formalise the sector, giving domestic workers access to the Compensation Fund through the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act (COIDA), and to 100% of the National Minimum Wage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, both these changes, while positive for domestic workers, are somewhat double-edged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Compensation Fund, this requires employers and domestic workers to each contribute 1% of a worker’s wages to the fund each month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Employers carry the administrative burden of doing so, even when employing a domestic worker part-time, as many do. New provisions under the laws have also come into effect<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of this, employers may opt to ignore this provision to the detriment of the domestic worker, or they may forego employing a domestic worker entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, the National Minimum Wage benefits domestic workers by ensuring they receive a minimum hourly rate for their work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this places the resultant financial burden on private households, who, again, may opt to cut these services altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several household finance surveys in 2025 showed that cutting domestic worker services is among the first things employers do to save money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2026, households employing domestic workers at the minimum wage will see their costs increase by 5%, taking the rate from R28.79 to R30.23 for each ordinary hour worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most workers, the hourly rate translates to a weekly rate of R1,264.85 (based on a 45-hour working week) and a monthly rate of R5,894.40 (based on 4.3 weeks or 195 hours).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a more typical work month of 160 hours, the minimum would be R4,834, up from R4,606 in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notably, under South Africa\u2019s NMW laws, employers are required to pay at least the minimum wage for four hours of work a day, regardless of the number of hours worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the true minimum wage will be around R121 per day, up from R115 in 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest employment data from Stats SA show that domestic worker jobs in the country continue to decline annually, despite a slight increase in the number of positions filled over the final quarter of 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":812340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[9208,16476,1809],"class_list":["post-851518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-domestic-workers","tag-qlfs","tag-stats-sa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851518","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851518"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":851665,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851518\/revisions\/851665"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}