Annual Leave Calculator Australia

How annual leave accrues in Australia

Under the National Employment Standards (NES) in the Fair Work Act, full-time and part-time employees get 4 weeks of paid annual leave for each year of service (s 87). Shift workers, as defined by their award or agreement, get 5 weeks. Leave accrues progressively according to your ordinary hours of work and carries over from year to year, so there is no "use it or lose it" in Australia. Casual employees do not get paid annual leave; their casual loading is paid instead.

Because it accrues by ordinary hours, the accrual rate is 4 ÷ 52 = 0.07692 hours of leave for every ordinary hour worked. On a 38-hour week that is 2.923 hours a week, 5.846 hours a fortnight and 152 hours (4 weeks, or 20 days of 7.6 hours) a year. Overtime hours do not accrue leave because they are not ordinary hours.

Annual leave calculator for a 38-hour week: worked example

Sam works 38 hours a week at $35.00 an hour. After a full year he has accrued 152 hours of annual leave, worth $5,320 at his base rate. His award pays a 17.5% leave loading, adding $931, so four weeks off costs his employer $6,251 in leave pay. If he has worked only 26 weeks, he has 76.0 hours (10 days) available.

As a shift worker under his award, Sam would accrue 190 hours (5 weeks) a year, at 0.09615 hours per hour worked. Under s 87(3), award-free employees count as shift workers only if they work in a business rostered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, are regularly rostered to those shifts, and regularly work Sundays and public holidays.

Annual leave loading (17.5%) and how it is taxed

Leave loading is not part of the NES. It comes from your modern award, enterprise agreement or contract, and the common rate is 17.5%. The Clerks Award, for example, pays the greater of 17.5% of the minimum award hourly rate or the weekend penalty rates you would have earned while rostered (clause 32.3). That means the loading is calculated on the award rate, not on an above-award salary, unless your agreement says otherwise. Many salaried contracts absorb the loading into the salary, so check before you assume it is paid.

Leave loading paid while you are employed is ordinary salary and wages. It is added to the pay it is paid with and taxed at your marginal rate. On a $72,800 salary, Sam's $931 loading adds about $298 of tax at a 32% marginal rate (including Medicare), leaving $633. Your employer may withhold a little more in the pay that contains it; any excess comes back when you lodge.

Leave loading also attracts super. The ATO treats annual leave loading as ordinary time earnings (and, from 1 July 2026, qualifying earnings under Payday Super) unless it is demonstrably paid for lost overtime opportunities.

Unused annual leave when you leave a job

When employment ends, untaken annual leave must be paid out at the amount you would have received had you taken the leave (s 90(2)), which includes leave loading if your award pays loading on leave taken. The payment is taxed under the ATO's Schedule 7 rules:

• Resignation, dismissal or retirement: leave accrued after 17 August 1993 is taxed at your marginal rates, like normal pay.
• Leave accrued before 18 August 1993: withheld at 32%.
• Genuine redundancy, invalidity or an approved early retirement scheme: all unused annual leave and loading is withheld at 32%, whatever your marginal rate.
• Unused leave paid on termination is not ordinary time earnings, so no super guarantee is paid on it.

Personal/carer's leave (sick leave) on a 38-hour week

Full-time employees get 10 days of paid personal/carer's leave a year (s 96); part-time employees get it pro rata. Since the High Court's 2020 Mondelez decision a "day" is a notional day of one-tenth of your fortnightly ordinary hours, so the entitlement is two weeks of ordinary hours: 76 hours a year on a 38-hour week, whether you work them over four days or five. It accrues at 0.03846 hours per ordinary hour, or 2.92 hours a fortnight, and accumulates year to year, but unlike annual leave it is not paid out when you leave.

On top of that, every employee including casuals gets 2 days of compassionate leave for each death or life-threatening illness in the family or household (paid for non-casuals), 2 days of unpaid carer's leave per occasion once paid leave runs out, and 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave each year, which is available in full from day one, is not pro rata for part-timers and casuals, and does not accumulate.

Rules that change your annual leave balance

• Unpaid leave does not count as service (s 22), so no annual or personal leave accrues while you are on it. Paid leave, including annual leave itself, does accrue.
• Leave does not accrue while you are off work and receiving workers' compensation, unless the state compensation law allows it (s 130).
• A public holiday that falls during your annual leave is paid as a public holiday, not deducted from your balance (s 89).
• Cashing out is only allowed if your award or agreement permits it, by separate written agreement each time, and you must keep at least 4 weeks of leave afterwards. The Clerks Award also caps cashing out at 2 weeks in any 12 months.
• If you build up excessive leave (more than 8 weeks under many awards), your employer can direct you to take some, but only if the direction is reasonable and you keep at least 6 weeks.