August's payslips were a little bigger than a year before. The average take-home pay in PayInc's net salary index came to R21,622, 1.9% more than in August 2025. Once inflation is taken out, that same pay was worth 2.6% less than a year earlier.
PayInc is the national payments utility, and its index follows the net salaries of about 2.1 million South Africans earning between R5,000 and R100,000 a month. That makes it a read on ordinary payslips rather than the top end.
August also undid a small win. In July, take-home pay after inflation rose for the first time in nine months; in August it fell again, by 0.5%. For the year so far, salaries are up 1.6% in rand, against 3.7% for the whole of 2025, and down 2.1% after inflation.
Inflation's next push
The squeeze is set to tighten. Inflation eased to 4.4% in August, but PayInc expects the renewed conflict in the Middle East to push it above 5% in October and keep it high for several months. Elize Kruger, PayInc's independent economist, says the Reserve Bank's rate increases, half a percentage point so far this year, put further strain on salary earners' budgets.
Not every payslip feels it the same way. Average gross pay in the formal non-farm economy was R32,828 a month in the first half of 2026, according to the latest Quarterly Employment Statistics, while electricity, gas and water workers averaged R62,454. Salary earners, Kruger says, "are experiencing the current economic environment very differently", but the index as a whole still points to continued pressure.
For households, Kruger says, a fall like August's "erodes purchasing power, discretionary spending and confidence", and rising inflation is likely to delay any recovery in what salaries can buy.
At the bottom of the pay scale
For the lowest-paid, the sums are harsher. The Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group, a civil society group, priced a basic food basket for low-income families at R5,488.06 in August and September, 2% more than a year ago, Business Day reported.
The group works from the national minimum wage, R5,078.64 for an average 21-day working month. Transport and electricity take close to two-thirds of that, and if everything left went on food it would come to R449.79 per person a month, about half the national food poverty line of R868.
And that is the basic basket. The one a registered dietician designed for proper, healthy nutrition costs R6,655.29.
