I often catch myself doing a small mental calculation.

When someone helps me with everyday tasks, simple but honest work, I take what I pay them for the day and multiply it by 30. And then the discomfort hits: even if they worked every single day of the month, the total would still be less than what many households spend on a single major expense.

It’s not exploitation. It’s not indifference. It’s the brutal imbalance of South Africa: with a Gini coefficient of around 0.63 (a statistical way of saying inequality here is among the highest on the planet). Youth unemployment is above 40%, and overall unemployment hovers at 1 in 3.

And it forces a deeper question:

What does “fair pay” mean in a society where millions have no work at all?

The Hard Truth

We often talk about dignity as if it only begins at a “living wage.”

But in a country like ours, the first step toward dignity is the opportunity to earn anything at all.

A small income (even from entry-level, low-paying work) can change a family’s trajectory. It puts food in the house. It buys school shoes. It restores a sense of purpose. It’s not enough, but it’s something.

Because the true injustice isn’t that some jobs pay too little. It’s that there are so few jobs to begin with.

The Broken Bridge

South Africa’s labour market has drifted into a dangerous shape:

• A small pool of high-skill, high-paying jobs

• A middle class that isn’t growing fast enough to absorb new entrants

• Rising grant dependency for those shut out

• And a collapsing pipeline of accessible, entry-level work in between

What’s missing is the bridge: simple, accessible, entry-level work.

Work that teaches punctuality, reliability, teamwork, and resilience. Work that helps someone show up, learn, adapt, and build confidence. Work that doesn’t necessarily change a life immediately but opens the door to something that might.

If you study almost any country that moved from stagnation to growth, the first inflection point was always the same: mass participation. Entry-level jobs that gave people a start (even if they didn’t pay much) became the foundation for upward mobility.

Not every job can pay R10,000 a month. But every job can lead somewhere, and that progression is what grows an economy.

Participation first. Progression next.

What Needs to Change

If we want more dignity, we need more first jobs. And that means making it easier for people to hire, and easier for people to be hired.

That requires:

• Cutting red tape that suffocates small businesses

• Rewarding companies that take first-time job entrants

• Normalising temporary, flexible, and short-term work as legitimate stepping stones

• Investing in community-level work programmes, such as maintenance, cleaning, gardens, and early childhood care

• Lowering the cost of entry into the labour market through simpler hiring rules and less administrative burden

We need to stop treating low-wage work as failure and start recognising it as a foundation.

The Bigger Picture

South Africa doesn’t just need more good jobs. It needs more first jobs.

Because for someone shut out of the economy, the gap between despair and dignity is not an executive salary. It’s the chance to work. To learn. To earn a beginning.

So yes, I still wrestle with the discomfort of paying what feels like “too little.”

But the greater discomfort would be paying nothing at all, because there was no job to offer, no bridge to opportunity, no first step available.

The truth is simple:

The first step out of poverty isn’t wealth. It’s work.