There is widespread recognition, both internationally and in South Africa, that the measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 have impacted particularly negatively on informal workers, whose jobs are precarious, who often depend on daily earnings for survival, and who lack legal and social protections. However, it is also likely that these impacts have been experienced unevenly by different groups of workers within the informal economy. In many contexts, the current moment has been described as a ‘triple crisis’ consisting of health, economic and care crisis that impacts on women more than men. This paper analyses the first wave of the NIDS-CRAM survey in order to identify how the effects of the COVID-19 crisis differ within the informal economy and, in particular by gender and type of employment (by self-employment, informal wage employment and casual employment).