[imagesource:here]

An economic bounceback seems far off after these past 15 months of load shedding stages, alert levels, and phases of lockdowns and their various restrictions.

While many have lost their jobs, or been forced to take pay cuts, domestic workers have been among the worst affected.

SweepSouth’s latest Pay and Working Conditions for Domestic Workers report for 2021, drawn from 7 000 responses from South African domestic workers, give us an overview of the current living conditions of the women and men who take care of our homes and office spaces.

The report reveals that the impact of COVID-19 on the livelihoods of domestic workers has been significant, with one in five domestic workers in the country losing their job due to the pandemic.

BusinessTech has more:

This aligns with numbers reported by Stats SA in its quarterly labour force surveys, which found that close to 250 000 domestic workers lost work during the onset of lockdown in South Africa.

Comparing first quarter 2021 data to first quarter 2020 data, 160 000 domestic workers are still without work.

For context, South Africa has around a million domestic workers.

For those who managed to keep their jobs, the pandemic has impacted earnings quite substantially, too.

According to the research, domestic workers not employed by SweepSouth (SweepStars below) earned between R2 614 and R2 916 a month.

That is below the minimum wage earnings (assuming 160 hours of work a month) of R3 054.

The most concerning findings were that one in five domestic workers (21%) are earning less than R1 500 a month, and two-thirds earn below minimum wage (R21,69 per hour):

Only 1% reported earning more than R6 000 a month.

Gauteng employers pay their workers 27% more than the rest of South Africa, and 8% higher than those in the Western Cape.

The research also found that childcare is the most lucrative role, while gardening earns the lowest:

There is a disappointing disparity between earnings and cost of living:

South Africa shows a deficit when comparing earnings to basic costs. This means that workers in these regions will be forced to take on debt or reduce spending costs on vital items to make ends meet every month.

Another fascinating response captured from the survey related to vaccine hesitancy and concern across the country.

With collective data from Kenya (dark green, centre), Nigeria (light green, right), and South Africa (blue, left), here’s what was found:

South Africa showed the greatest hesitancy despite many experiencing the loss of someone they know to COVID-19 and comprehensive knowledge of COVID-19 shown in our 2020 annual survey.

The ability to overcome the pandemic is largely predicated on the success of vaccination rollout efforts, so extensive effort should be made to combat misinformation and provide better vaccination education.

The report concludes by saying that even though there were some encouraging signs in this year’s report, the general outlook is still grim for domestic workers in the country.

You can measure how you are doing in terms of paying a living wage by using tools like the Living Wage Calculator.

Ultimately, and especially during these difficult times, we have to remember each other’s humanity and if this pandemic has taught us anything, there’s no better place for change than at home.

[sources:sweepsouth&businesstech]