Casual Loading in Australia 2026-27
The loading is the amount an award adds to a base hourly rate because a casual gets no paid leave and no notice. Across the 15 modern awards published here it is 25%, without a single exception. What is not the same everywhere is whether the award prints the casual hourly figure for you, or leaves it to be worked out.
The short answer
25%, and it is your award that sets it rather than one national rule. All 15 awards on this site carry the same figure, read from their own text. For an employee no award or agreement covers, the Fair Work Ombudsman publishes a casual national minimum wage of $33.05 an hour from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, against $26.44 an hour for a full-time or part-time employee on the same minimum. $26.44 plus a quarter is $33.05, which is the Ombudsman’s own figure to the cent.
Multiplying by 1.25 works for that one sum. It stops working the moment a penalty rate is involved, which is the part most pages on this subject get wrong.
Which awards print a casual rate, and which leave it to be worked out.
This is the part that actually differs between awards, and it is not something the loading percentage tells you. Some awards republish every casual hourly rate in a rates summary schedule. Others publish none, and leave the reader to apply the loading themselves. Of the 15 awards here, 11 print a casual figure for every classification, 2 print one for most, and 2 print none at all. That is 183 of 277 classification rows taken straight from the award, and 94 worked out from the minimum hourly rate.
| Award | Casual rates in the award | Classifications | Published | Worked out here |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacturing Award Pay RatesMA000010 | Every classification, Schedule C | 19 | 19 | 0 |
| Clubs Award Pay RatesMA000058 | Every classification, Schedule B | 15 | 15 | 0 |
| Hospitality Award Pay RatesMA000009 | Every classification, Schedule B | 15 | 15 | 0 |
| Pharmacy Award Pay RatesMA000012 | Every classification, Schedule B | 14 | 14 | 0 |
| Warehouse Award Pay RatesMA000084 | Every classification, Schedule B | 12 | 12 | 0 |
| Clerks Award Pay RatesMA000002 | Every classification, Schedule B | 10 | 10 | 0 |
| Retail Award Pay RatesMA000004 | Every classification, Schedule B | 8 | 8 | 0 |
| Gardening and Landscaping Award Pay RatesMA000101 | Every classification, Schedule B | 6 | 6 | 0 |
| Security Award Pay RatesMA000016 | Every classification, Schedule B | 5 | 5 | 0 |
| Fast Food Award Pay RatesMA000003 | Every classification, Schedule A | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Cleaning Services Award Pay RatesMA000022 | Every classification, Schedule B | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| Nurses Award Pay RatesMA000034 | Most classifications, Schedule B | 67 | 65 | 2 |
| Restaurant Award Pay RatesMA000119 | Most classifications, Schedule B | 11 | 7 | 4 |
| Children's Services Award Pay RatesMA000120 | None, the award publishes no hourly rates schedule | 12 | 0 | 12 |
| SCHADS Award Pay RatesMA000100 | None, the award publishes no hourly rates schedule | 76 | 0 | 76 |
The distinction matters more than it looks. Where the award publishes the casual figure, that published figure is the entitlement, and it can sit a cent away from the base rate times 1.25 because the award rounds on its own terms rather than a calculator’s. Where the award publishes nothing, the rate is no less enforceable, but every site quoting it is quoting arithmetic. On this site a figure of that kind is disclosed as worked out from the minimum hourly rate, never presented as though the award printed it.
The loading is absorbed into a penalty rate, not multiplied by it.
This is the single most useful thing on the page, and it is the thing the summaries at the top of the search results hedge on. They say a casual weekend rate “usually” includes the loading, “depending on the specific award”. In the four awards read against their own text for this, there is no usually and no depending.
The rule
Where an award sets a period at a given percentage of the minimum hourly rate for a full-time employee, the casual percentage for that same period is that percentage plus 25 points. It is not that percentage multiplied by 1.25.
Why the error is expensive
Multiplying adds a quarter of the penalty as well as a quarter of the base, so it overstates the rate, and it overstates it by more the higher the penalty goes. An employer using the wrong method underpays on one reading and overpays on the other, and neither matches the award.
The awards do not leave this to inference. They say it in their own words:
General Retail Industry Award, MA000004
“The overtime rates for casual employees have been calculated by adding the casual loading prescribed by clause 11.1 to the overtime rates for full-time and part-time employees”
Its penalty table names the same thing in the column header, which reads “% of minimum hourly rate (inclusive of casual loading)”.
Fast Food Industry Award, MA000003
“The penalty rates for casual employees have been calculated by adding the casual loading specified in clause 11.2(b) to the penalty rates for full-time and part-time employees”
Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award, MA000100
Clause 26.3: casual employees are paid the casual loading “in addition to” the Saturday and Sunday rates, and clause 34.2 uses the same construction for a public holiday.
The award then prints the combined casual percentages itself, which removes the ambiguity rather than relying on the reader to resolve it.
Hospitality Industry (General) Award, MA000009
Sets out full-time and casual percentages side by side in one table, with the casual column running 25 points above the full-time column for the same period. Clause 29.3 then makes penalties non-cumulative, so where two would apply the highest is paid and the others are not added.
What this page will not do
It will not print the penalty percentages themselves. The rule above is about how two figures combine and it holds whatever the figures are. The figures differ by award, by day, by whether the work is shiftwork, and in at least one award by classification, and none of them is published here until it has been read from the award text and checked. The first rule of this site is that no rate ships unverified, and a rate that would be useful is not an exception to it.
Where these figures come from.
Provenance
Verified- Loading in every award here
- 25%
- Awards read
- 15
- Classification rows
- 277
- Casual rates the awards publish
- 183
- Casual rates worked out here
- 94
- Award texts retrieved
- 6 September 2026 to 9 September 2026
- Fair Work page last updated
- 2026-08-07
- Fair Work page retrieved
- 2026-09-11
The loading is not our arithmetic. It was read from each award’s own text at the Fair Work award library, award by award, and the published-against-worked-out counts above are recomputed from those same files every time this page is built. The casual national minimum wage of $33.05 an hour, and the statement that it already includes a 25% loading, come from the Fair Work Ombudsman’s award and agreement free wages page, which gave its own last updated date as 2026-08-07 when it was retrieved on 2026-09-11. Nothing here is copied from another pay site, and no figure on this page was taken from a search result summary.
What this page does not cover.
Listed as plainly as what it does, because a rate page that hides its gaps is how the wrong number ends up on a payslip.
Penalty and shift percentages
This page gives the rule for how a loading combines with a penalty rate. It does not print the percentages themselves, because they are not verified against every award text yet.
Awards not published here
15 awards have been read from the award text. The loading in an award that is not on this list is not something this page can vouch for, so check that award.
The base the percentage applies to
Some awards apply a percentage to the minimum hourly rate and others to an ordinary hourly rate that includes all-purpose allowances. That difference changes the dollar answer without changing the loading.
Casual Loading questions, answered.
How much is casual loading in Australia?
25% of the minimum hourly rate for your classification, in every one of the 15 modern awards published on this site. It is set by the award rather than by one national rule, which is why the figure has to be checked award by award rather than assumed. For an employee no award or agreement covers, the Fair Work Ombudsman publishes the casual national minimum wage as $33.05 an hour from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, against $26.44 an hour for a full-time or part-time employee on the same minimum.
What does 25% casual loading mean?
It means a quarter is added to the base hourly rate for the classification, and that the extra is paid instead of entitlements rather than on top of an otherwise identical job. A casual gets no paid annual leave, no paid sick or carer's leave, no notice of termination and no redundancy pay. The loading is what the award pays in place of them, so $26.44 an hour as a permanent employee and $33.05 an hour as a casual are not two rates for the same deal.
Is the casual loading percentage different in NSW, Victoria, Queensland or WA?
No. A modern award is a national instrument made by the Fair Work Commission, so the loading in all 15 awards here is the same in every state and territory. There is no separate New South Wales figure and no separate Victorian one, and a page that offers you a state-by-state table of them is inventing the variation. What can differ by state is which instrument covers you: if you are paid under a state industrial instrument rather than a federal modern award, read that instrument instead of this page.
Do casuals get the loading on top of penalty rates as well?
The loading is absorbed into the penalty rate, not multiplied by it. Where an award sets a period at a given percentage of the minimum hourly rate for a full-time employee, the casual percentage for that same period is that percentage plus 25 points, not that percentage multiplied by 1.25. Two of the four awards checked against their own text say it in a note that uses the word "adding", and the other two print the combined casual percentage in the table so there is nothing to work out. Multiplying is the common error, and it overstates the rate because it adds a quarter of the penalty as well as a quarter of the base.
Is casual loading included in the hourly rate on my payslip?
Usually yes, as one combined casual hourly figure rather than two lines. Of the 15 awards here, 11 print that combined figure for every classification, so the number on the payslip should match the award exactly. Where the award prints nothing, the employer works it out, which is where a rounding difference or a straight underpayment can hide. Check the figure against the minimum hourly rate for your classification plus the loading, and if there is a gap, the gap is the question.
Why does my award not show a casual hourly rate?
Because not every award publishes one. Of the 15 awards on this site, 11 print a casual hourly figure for every classification, 2 print one for most, and 2 print none at all. In an award that prints none, the casual rate still exists and is still enforceable. It is the minimum hourly rate for your classification plus the loading in the award's casual employment clause. What is missing is the arithmetic, not the entitlement, and on this site a figure worked out that way is labelled as worked out rather than presented as the award's own.
See what a casual rate leaves you with.
Enter your casual hourly rate and the hours you worked to see take-home pay after income tax and the Medicare levy.
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