Penalty Rates in Australia 2026-27

There is no single national penalty rate: the award that covers the work sets both the percentage and the base. These are the Saturday, Sunday and public holiday rates three awards publish, as percentages and as the 256 hourly figures they print.

Saturday, Sunday and public holiday pay rates.

The dollar figures are the lowest adult classification each award prices, read from its own rates schedule. Every other classification is in the tables further down.

What a penalty rate is, and three things it is not.

A penalty rate applies to ordinary hours, the hours you were rostered to work, when they fall at a time the award treats as unsociable, and it reprices the whole hour rather than adding its percentage to the ordinary rate.

• It is not overtime

  Overtime is about how many hours you worked, a penalty rate about when. Each award prints overtime in its own table (retail Table 11, hospitality Table 13, fast food Table 5). The Overtime Calculator prices a week of time and a half and double time.

• It is not a shift loading

  Retail clause 23.1 limits its shiftwork rates to employees engaged as shiftworkers, so a late finish is not automatically a shift rate. Those rates are on the retail award page.

• It is not casual loading

  The loading is paid because a casual has no paid leave, the penalty because of when the hour fell. Casual Loading covers the loading itself.

The percentages, award by award.

Each row is a condition in the award’s own words, with the percentage it prints for a full-time or part-time employee and for a casual.

The casual percentage absorbs the loading, it does not compound it.

In all 16 conditions across these 3 awards the casual percentage is the full-time percentage plus exactly 25 points, and 3 of 3 awards pass that check on every condition. A retail Saturday is 125% full-time and 150% casual. Multiplying 125% by the loading gives 156.25%, which no award here states, because it applies the loading to the penalty as well as the base.

Table 12—Penalty rates (MA000004, 4 conditions checked) and Table 14—Penalty rates (MA000009, 6 conditions checked) print the casual percentage in its own column and declare it inclusive of the loading. The Fast Food Industry Award 2020 says so in a note to Table 6—Penalty rates (6 conditions checked): “NOTE1: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 specified in Table 6—Penalty rates.” Which awards print the loading and which leave it to be worked out is on Casual Loading.

What the percentage is taken from, and whether two penalties add.

Table 12—Penalty rates (MA000004) and Table 6—Penalty rates (MA000003) take the percentage of the minimum hourly rate. Table 14—Penalty rates (MA000009) takes it of the ordinary hourly rate, and the award defines it: “ordinary hourly rate means the minimum hourly rate for an employee plus any all-purpose allowances to which the employee is entitled.” Its schedule’s dollar figures use the minimum hourly rate alone, so with an all-purpose allowance they are a floor, and the allowance is added first. So “Sunday is 150% of your hourly rate” is right in retail and wrong for a hospitality employee carrying an allowance. The Electrical Award takes every penalty of a rate that already includes its industry and tool allowances, so a grade 5 electrician's Sunday is $62.26 an hour, not 200% of the $29.45 its clause 16.2 prints, as Electrical Award Pay Rates sets out.

Clause 29.3 of the Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 stops two penalties adding: “Subject to clause 29.3(c), where more than one penalty rate would be payable for hours worked at a particular time, the employer must pay the employee the highest applicable penalty rate, but no other applicable penalty rate is payable.” The General Retail Industry Award 2020 and the Fast Food Industry Award 2020 contain none of “highest applicable penalty rate”, “not cumulative”, “in substitution for and not cumulative”, so neither says whether penalties add, and neither does this page. Retail clause 23.1 says “Part 6 applies only to persons specifically employed to do shiftwork.” and its schedule puts shiftworkers in their own tables.

The hourly figures the awards publish.

256 figures, each read from the award’s own rates schedule and reconciled against the percentage and the ordinary hours figure in the same row, rounded half up to the cent. A column that does not apply to a classification is marked not applicable, because the award prints no rate there on purpose.

Penalty rates for a particular kind of employment.

A part-time employee is paid the same percentages as a full-timer. What changes is which hours count as ordinary ones, and what extra hours are paid, which Part Time Penalty Rates works through.

• Part Time Penalty RatesWhether a part-time employee is paid penalty rates, and how the award treats hours outside an agreed pattern, with the clause references.

The base rates these percentages apply to are on Retail Award Pay Rates, Hospitality Award Pay Rates and Fast Food Award Pay Rates. The cook grades inside the hospitality table are worked through on Chef Pay Rate, and the kitchen attendant grades, which the restaurant award sets as well, on Kitchen Hand Pay Rate.

Where these figures come from.

Each award was read from its consolidated text in the Fair Work award library, and Olivia Harper checked every dollar figure against the percentage and the ordinary hours printed in the same table, rounded half up to the cent.

What this page does not cover.

• SCHADS penalty rates

  MA000100 publishes no penalty rate table and states its overtime in words rather than numerals, so this site publishes none of it.

• Junior and apprentice scales

  294 further classification rows were read and reconciled but are not printed, because they price a junior, apprentice or trainee base rather than the adult scale.

• Every other award

  Three awards are read for this page. A percentage from one of them is not evidence about yours.

Penalty Rates questions, answered.