Average salary in Tanzania per month: TZS 609,354 in the official survey

What this number is, and what it is not

The National Bureau of Statistics and the Office of the Chief Government Statistician in Zanzibar ask formal employers what they pay. Cash earnings means pay before any deductions, and it includes regular allowances, overtime and house rent paid in cash. The survey covers 4,073,887 formal jobs: 3,572,331 regular and 501,556 casual.

It leaves out most of the people who work for themselves or in small informal businesses, so it tells you nothing about what a boda boda rider or a market trader earns. An average is also pulled up by a small number of very high salaries, and the survey does not publish the middle salary in the tables we read.

The figure rose from TZS 569,951 in 2022/23. It is more than two years old now. Since June 2024 the public service minimum rose by 35% (announced on 1 May 2025) and a new private sector minimum wage order started on 1 January 2026, so today's figure is likely to differ.

What would TZS 609,354 leave in your hand?

Take someone paid exactly the average, in a private sector job with 10% NSSF:

Gross pay: TZS 609,354
NSSF at 10%: TZS 60,935
Taxable pay: TZS 548,419
PAYE: 20,000 + 20% of 28,419 = TZS 25,684
Take-home pay: TZS 522,735

Your own sum takes ten seconds in the take-home pay calculator. Going the other way, the salary to ask for tool starts from what you need in hand and gives the gross figure to ask for.

How to use these tables in a pay talk

Use them to get a rough sense of a sector, never as proof of what you are owed. An employer can fairly answer that a national average says nothing about this post in this town.

Three checks are worth more:

• The legal floor for your sector: see the minimum wage per hour, day and week. It applies to private employers and is the law, unlike an average.
• Real adverts. On 1 November 2026 we counted 1,118 adverts in our data, and only 70 stated pay, almost all from one donor funded employer. See employers that publish salary.
• The offer itself. Ask for basic pay and each allowance in writing, then use how to negotiate your first salary.

Oddities in the tables

We print the figures as NBS published them and we do not fix them. You should know about three things.

The overall average of TZS 609,354 is lower than both the male figure (635,685) and the female figure (635,590) in the same table, which an ordinary average could not be. The report's summary names accommodation and food as the lowest paid industry, while its Table 4.4 shows manufacturing lower, at 292,761. And an annex shows the private sector at 557,007 where Table 4.1 shows 549,373.

None of this makes the survey useless, but it is a good reason not to quote a figure down to the last shilling, and not to treat a gap between two regions as real. Lindi at the top of the regional list doesn't mean you should move to Lindi: it says nothing about the jobs open there today.

Looking for work rather than a number?

Browse private sector jobs in Tanzania or government jobs. Applying is free, and nobody should ask you to pay for a job.

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