Today’s post by Aidan Horn shows that wages progress over people’s lifetime for those who are formally employed, but not for those who are informally employed. This is because the wage gap between informal and formal employment is smaller for people younger than 30, and larger for people older than 30. These charts also show what this has looked like since 2010. Average real wages (that is, after discounting consumer inflation) have not risen in the past 15 years, and young people’s median wages have dropped significantly in the last five years.
In 2022, half of our employed population earned less than R5060 per month (in Dec 2024 rands), which should serve as a reminder of South Africa’s low income levels. The Quarterly Labour Force Survey suggests that average and median real wages have not risen in the past 15 years.


Footnote
See our blog for comparisons to other sources of wage data (here and here).
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