If you are on a registered learnership in South Africa, there is a legal minimum you must be paid. It is not up to the company, and it is not a favour. It is set by the Minister of Employment and Labour and published in the Government Gazette. This page reproduces the current table exactly as it appears in that gazette, and shows you what it works out to per month.
Checked on 11 August 2026. The figures below come from Government Gazette No. 54075, Government Notice R.7083, dated 3 February 2026, signed by Nomakhosazana Meth, Minister of Employment and Labour, in terms of section 6(5) of the National Minimum Wage Act No. 9 of 2018. They became binding on 1 March 2026 and replaced the table published under Government Notice No. 52053 of 4 February 2025.
The short answer
A learner on a registered learnership earns a weekly allowance, not the ordinary national minimum wage. The amount depends on two things and only two things:
- The NQF level of the qualification you are working towards.
- How many credits you have already earned towards it.
The lowest allowance in the country is R455,00 per week. The highest is R2 654,04 per week. Everything else sits between those two numbers.
Notice what is not on that list: the company you work for, the industry, the province, and how generous your employer feels. Those can push your allowance above the minimum, and many good employers do. None of them may push it below.
The official table, exactly as gazetted
This is Schedule 2 of the National Minimum Wage Act as amended on 3 February 2026. Nothing has been rounded, adjusted or summarised.
| NQF level | Credits already earned by learner | Minimum allowance per week |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1 to 2 | 0 to 120 | R455,00 |
| 121 to 240 | R909,94 | |
| Level 3 | 0 to 120 | R455,00 |
| 121 to 240 | R856,94 | |
| 241 to 360 | R1 402,87 | |
| Level 4 | 0 to 120 | R455,00 |
| 121 to 240 | R910,04 | |
| 241 to 360 | R1 402,87 | |
| 361 to 480 | R2 047,41 | |
| Level 5 to 8 | 0 to 120 | R455,00 |
| 121 to 240 | R985,76 | |
| 241 to 360 | R1 474,90 | |
| 361 to 480 | R2 077,79 | |
| 481 to 600 | R2 654,04 |
One oddity in the table that is not a mistake
Look at the 121 to 240 credit band. Level 3 pays R856,94, which is less than the R909,94 paid at Level 1 to 2. A higher level paying less looks like a typing error, and it is the sort of thing a careless site quietly “fixes”.
It is not an error on our side. That is what the gazette says, and we have checked it twice against the source document. If an employer pays you R856,94 a week on a Level 3 learnership at that credit stage, they are complying with the law. We have left it exactly as published rather than tidying it into something that looks more sensible but is not what the law actually says.
What that is per month
The gazette only publishes weekly figures. The monthly column below is calculated by us, and it is worth explaining how, because a made-up multiplier is how wrong numbers spread.
We did not invent the conversion. The same gazette converts weekly pay to monthly at 4,333 weeks, and assumes a 45 hour week, in its Contract Cleaning and Wholesale and Retail tables. You can check that it works: the national minimum wage of R30,23 an hour, times 45 hours, is R1 360,35 a week, and that times 4,333 is R5 894,40 a month. Both of those numbers appear printed in the gazette itself. So the two conversions used below are the government’s own, not ours.
| NQF level | Credits | Per week (gazetted) | Roughly per month | Works out to per hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 2 | 0 to 120 | R455,00 | R1 971,52 | R10,11 |
| 1 to 2 | 121 to 240 | R909,94 | R3 942,77 | R20,22 |
| 3 | 0 to 120 | R455,00 | R1 971,52 | R10,11 |
| 3 | 121 to 240 | R856,94 | R3 713,12 | R19,04 |
| 3 | 241 to 360 | R1 402,87 | R6 078,64 | R31,17 |
| 4 | 0 to 120 | R455,00 | R1 971,52 | R10,11 |
| 4 | 121 to 240 | R910,04 | R3 943,20 | R20,22 |
| 4 | 241 to 360 | R1 402,87 | R6 078,64 | R31,17 |
| 4 | 361 to 480 | R2 047,41 | R8 871,43 | R45,50 |
| 5 to 8 | 0 to 120 | R455,00 | R1 971,52 | R10,11 |
| 5 to 8 | 121 to 240 | R985,76 | R4 271,30 | R21,91 |
| 5 to 8 | 241 to 360 | R1 474,90 | R6 390,74 | R32,78 |
| 5 to 8 | 361 to 480 | R2 077,79 | R9 003,06 | R46,17 |
| 5 to 8 | 481 to 600 | R2 654,04 | R11 499,96 | R58,98 |
Use the weekly figures if you are checking whether your employer is complying. Those are the legal ones. The monthly column is for working out whether you can afford transport and rent, which is the question most people are actually asking.
Why the starting allowance is so low, and what changes it
Every single NQF level starts at the same R455,00 a week when you have 0 to 120 credits. That is about R1 971 a month, and there is no honest way to describe that as a living wage. It is worth being clear about that rather than dressing it up.
The thing that moves you up the table is credits, not time. This is the single most useful fact on this page, and almost nobody explains it:
- Your allowance is meant to increase during the learnership as you bank credits, not only at the end of it.
- On a Level 4 learnership, crossing from 240 to 241 credits takes the minimum from R910,04 to R1 402,87 a week. That is a jump of over R2 100 a month, triggered by one credit.
- Crossing 360 credits at Level 4 takes it to R2 047,41, another R2 700 a month or so.
So ask your training provider, in writing, how many credits you have banked and when the next band starts. If you have crossed a threshold and your allowance has not moved, that is worth raising, politely and early. Most of the time it is an administrative oversight rather than anything deliberate.
Does this apply to you? Three questions
Schedule 2 applies to “workers who have concluded learnership agreements contemplated in section 17 of the Skills Development Act, 1998 (Act No. 97 of 1998)”. In plain language:
- Is there a signed learnership agreement? Three parties sign it: you, the employer, and the accredited training provider. If nobody has given you a copy of a signed agreement, you may not be on a learnership at all, whatever it is being called.
- Is the learnership registered with a SETA? A registered learnership leads to a qualification registered on the NQF. Ask which SETA, and ask for the qualification’s NQF level and total credits. Those two numbers are what decide your pay, so you are entitled to know them.
- Are you working towards a qualification, or just working? If there is no structured theory component and no accredited provider, you are probably an employee or an intern, not a learner. That matters, because the rates are different.
If you are NOT on a registered learnership, Schedule 2 does not apply to you and the ordinary national minimum wage of R30,23 an hour does. At 45 hours a week that is R1 360,35 a week, or about R5 894,40 a month, which is considerably more than the bottom of the learnership table. This catches people out: being called a “learner” when no learnership agreement exists can leave you paid less than the law would otherwise require.
The other rates in the same gazette
For context, the same notice sets these from 1 March 2026:
| Who | Minimum per ordinary hour |
|---|---|
| The national minimum wage | R30,23 |
| Farm workers | R30,23 |
| Domestic workers | R30,23 |
| Expanded Public Works Programme workers | R16,62 |
| Registered learners | Schedule 2, the table above |
Common questions
Is a learnership stipend taxed?
Allowances at these levels generally fall below the annual tax threshold, so most learners will not pay PAYE. This depends on your total income for the tax year and on your personal circumstances, so confirm your own position with SARS or your payroll department rather than assuming. We are not going to guess at your tax on a web page.
Can an employer pay more than the minimum?
Yes, and many do, particularly large employers and technical programmes. The gazette sets a floor, not a ceiling. If an advert quotes a figure well above these numbers, that is entirely legitimate.
Can an employer pay less if the learnership is “free training”?
No. The allowance is a legal minimum for a registered learnership. Training being valuable is not a reason to go below it. If you are being asked to pay to be placed on a learnership, treat that as a serious warning sign: legitimate learnerships are funded by the employer and the SETA, not by the learner.
Do these numbers change every year?
Yes, usually in February, taking effect on 1 March. The 2026 table replaced a 2025 one. If you are reading this well after August 2026, check the latest gazette before relying on the figures, and tell us if we have gone stale.
Where these numbers came from
We think you should be able to check us, so here is the trail:
- Government Gazette No. 54075, Notice R.7083 of 3 February 2026, the actual PDF on gov.za. Schedule 2 is on page 4.
- National Minimum Wage Act No. 9 of 2018, section 6(5).
- Skills Development Act No. 97 of 1998, section 17.
Every figure on this page was transcribed from that gazette by hand and checked twice. We did not copy them from another careers site, which is deliberate: while writing this page we found several of the best-ranking South African learnership pages quoting figures and application links that do not survive a check.
Next steps
If you now know what a learnership should pay, the useful next thing is finding one:
- How learnerships actually work, and how to apply
- All 21 SETAs, and what each one funds
- Learnership, internship or apprenticeship: which one are you being offered?
- Learnerships you can apply for without matric
- Education and training vacancies on MyJobNest
Checked on 11 August 2026 against Government Gazette No. 54075. Rates in this table take effect from 1 March 2026 and are normally updated each year in February. If you spot something out of date, please tell us on our contact page.
