Know Your Worth: A Living Tariff Approach for South Africa’s Self-Employed
Self-employed people in South Africa face daily expenses and fluctuating earnings. During our webinar, organised in collaboration with GIZ, we discussed how the Living Tariff tool can help workers look into their cost of living, value their work more accurately, and negotiate fairer rates.
21 April 2026
How the Living Tariff can support the self-employed in South Africa
"Price yourself correctly." It's the rule every self-employed worker lives by. Not as easy as it sounds. In South Africa, 17% of the total workforce is officially recorded as self-employed (World Bank Group data, 2025). Whether they are city-based delivery drivers, freelance content creators working from home, or online teachers, they juggle multiple clients and bear all the associated expenses and risks. They have no cushion against price shocks, non-payment, or platforms setting prices unilaterally.
The Living Tariff provides a means of computing and negotiating better rates. Having the same methodology as the calculations for the Living Wages data, this tool gives up-to-date information on the cost of living and labour law information. The aim is to help self-employed workers value their work more accurately and negotiate more confidently, where possible.
From data to rates: calculating the Living Tariff for the South African self-employed
When using the Living Tariff tool, South African self-employed workers can calculate based on their region and determine whether their earnings are sufficient to cover their living expenses. Taking into account not only taxes and social security, but also work-related equipment and overheads (admin tasks, training, and waiting time), the Living Tariff tool provides estimates on an hourly, monthly, or yearly basis. Users can also personalise the rate even further by adding planned working days, festivities, and other personal costs.
‘Half of the people working around the world are self-employed. If you are employed, you are entitled to a Minimum or Living Wage. If you are self-employed or a gig worker, you need to ensure that your income covers social security, pensions, and other costs. Including this in the discussion could be seen as too revolutionary, but it's simply a matter of fact’, says Paulien Osse, co-founder of WageIndicator and Global Lead Living Wages. The debate around the platform economy becomes increasingly more urgent. Pay floors are largely institutionalised for employees through Minimum Wages, collective bargaining, and Living Wage standards. However, these methods do not apply to self-employed workers. But in the debate around pay, every worker should be considered deserving of remuneration that meets their needs, regardless of their employment status or contract. Having “decent work in the platform economy” as a formal agenda item for this year’s International Labour Conference in Geneva is bound to spark even more conversations.
Pay benchmarks for self-employed workers in South Africa
For the self-employed in South Africa, the Living Tariff can be a starting point for setting their own standards. 'They can ask themselves if they can live on the suggested rate. If not, they can calculate a more realistic amount,’ Ines Meyer from the Living Wage South Africa Network says.
The conversation also covers how South African workers can leverage this concept and tool in practice. While accessing job opportunities in a context of high unemployment, they then face fierce competition and a race to the button on prices. As head of the ‘Digital Skills for Jobs and Income’ project for the promotion of employment-related and sought-after digital skills, particularly among young people and women, Suraya Adam stresses the importance of ensuring that workers can sustain themselves by assigning the right value to their work: 'Many of them are single mothers and breadwinners.' This can be achieved through knowledge, and by training workers on how to use the Living Tariff and calculate their rates, which is one of the project's objectives for the near future. 'Knowledge is power. If you were taught at school that your time and your skill is worth something, it would really change the way your career and your trajectory', adds Pooja Gianchandani from GIZ.
Raising awareness of the rights of the self-employed in South Africa
While growing in South Africa and across the globe, the gig economy and freelancing sit in a state of tension: although flexibility creates opportunities, workers are not always paid fairly or able to make ends meet due to rising costs and a lack of protection. Living Tariffs could provide an estimate for determining fair pay for the self-employed across different sectors, platform types, and regulations. Workers' allies, training organisations, and policymakers all have a role to play in putting the Living Tariff concept into practice. Above all, it is about raising awareness of pay rights for the self-employed and improving working conditions across the workforce as a whole.
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