Penalty Rates in Australia 2026-27

A penalty rate is the higher rate an award sets for ordinary hours worked at a time it treats as unsociable. There is no single national multiplier: the percentage and the base it applies to are both set by the award that covers the work. Below are the percentages three awards actually publish, and the 700 hourly figures they print against them.

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 those hours fall at a time the award treats as unsociable. It is expressed as a percentage of a base hourly rate, and it reprices the whole hour. An hour at 125% is not the ordinary rate with 125% added to it.

• It is not overtime

  Overtime is about how many hours you worked. A penalty rate is about when you worked them. Each award prints its overtime rates in separate tables, and this page publishes none of them.

• 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 published on the retail award page.

• It is not casual loading

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

The percentages, award by award.

Each row below is a condition the award itself names, with the percentage it prints for a full-time or part-time employee and for a casual. The wording in the first column is the award’s own.

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

This is the single most valuable correction on the page, because the summaries at the top of these search results hedge it. They say a casual weekend rate “usually” incorporates the loading, “depending on the specific award”. In all 16 conditions across these 3 awards, the casual percentage is the full-time percentage plus exactly 25 points. There is no usually and no depending: 3 of 3 awards pass that check on every condition they publish.

• General Retail Industry Award 2020, MA000004

  Table 12—Penalty rates prints the casual percentage in its own column and declares that column inclusive of the casual loading, so there is nothing left to work out. All 4 of its conditions were checked against the full-time column.

  Stated in Table 12—Penalty rates. Loading 25%, the casual percentage is the full-time percentage plus the casual loading in points, not multiplied by it.

• Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020, MA000009

  Table 14—Penalty rates prints the casual percentage in its own column and declares that column inclusive of the casual loading, so there is nothing left to work out. All 6 of its conditions were checked against the full-time column.

  Stated in Table 14—Penalty rates. Loading 25%, the casual percentage is the full-time percentage plus the casual loading in points, not multiplied by it.

• Fast Food Industry Award 2020, MA000003

  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.

  Stated in Table 6—Penalty rates. Loading 25%, the casual percentage is the full-time percentage plus the casual loading in points, not multiplied by it.

The loading itself, which awards publish it and which leave it to be worked out, is on Casual Loading.

The percentage applies to a different figure in each award.

Two employees can be on the same percentage and be owed different money, because the awards do not agree on what the percentage is a percentage of. One sentence saying “Sunday is 150% of your hourly rate” is right for a retail employee and wrong for a hospitality employee carrying an allowance.

• General Retail Industry Award 2020

  Percentage of the minimum hourly rate

  Stated in Table 12—Penalty rates.

• Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020

  Percentage of the ordinary hourly rate

  ordinary hourly rate means the minimum hourly rate for an employee plus any all-purpose allowances to which the employee is entitled.

  Stated in Table 14—Penalty rates. The dollar figures the schedule prints are calculated on the minimum hourly rate alone, so for anyone entitled to an all-purpose allowance they are a floor rather than the entitlement, and the allowance has to be added first.

• Fast Food Industry Award 2020

  Percentage of the minimum hourly rate

  Stated in Table 6—Penalty rates.

Whether two penalties can be added, and where the award refuses to say.

• General Retail Industry Award 2020No such clause

  The full text was searched for highest applicable penalty rate, not cumulative, in substitution for and not cumulative, and none of them appears. The absence is recorded rather than assumed, and it does not mean the penalties add. It means this award does not answer the question in those words, so neither does this page. It separates the collision structurally instead: clause 23.1 says “Part 6 applies only to persons specifically employed to do shiftwork.” and the schedule then splits shiftworkers into their own tables.

• Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020Clause 29.3

  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.

• Fast Food Industry Award 2020No such clause

  The full text was searched for highest applicable penalty rate, not cumulative, in substitution for and not cumulative, and none of them appears. The absence is recorded rather than assumed, and it does not mean the penalties add. It means this award does not answer the question in those words, so neither does this page.

The hourly figures the awards publish.

700 figures, every one of them read from the award’s own rates schedule rather than multiplied out here. Each was then reconciled against the percentage and the ordinary hours figure printed in the same row, rounded half up to the cent. A cent of difference is the exact error a competing summary published on this query, so the check is not decorative.

What is not here, and why.

Overtime is not here. Overtime prices hours beyond the ordinary ones, and none of the penalty clause tables in these three awards states an overtime percentage. SCHADS penalty rates are not here either: MA000100 publishes no penalty table, and its overtime is written as time and a half and double time rather than as numerals, so putting an hourly figure on it would mean inventing one.

Penalty rates for a particular kind of employment.

The percentages above are the same for a full-time and a part-time employee, and a casual is on its own column. The part-time question has its own answer, because what changes for a part-timer is which hours count as ordinary ones.

• 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.

For the classification levels and base hourly rates these percentages apply to, see Retail Award Pay Rates, Hospitality Award Pay Rates and Fast Food Award Pay Rates. A retail employee level 1 is paid $27.81 an hour for ordinary hours and $34.76 on a Saturday.

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.

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.

• Overtime

  Overtime is paid for hours beyond the ordinary ones. The penalty clause tables in these awards state no overtime percentage, so no overtime figure appears anywhere on this page.

• Retail shiftwork

  Retail limits its shiftwork rates to employees specifically employed as shiftworkers, and those tables are not published here. A late roster does not by itself put you on a shift rate.

• Hospitality evening and night dollars

  Two conditions are a percentage plus a flat hourly amount, and the rates schedule prints no dollar column for either. They appear here exactly as the award states them and never as an hourly figure.

• SCHADS penalty rates

  MA000100 publishes no penalty rate table and states its overtime in words rather than numerals. Extracting it would mean converting English into figures the award never printed, so this site publishes none of it.

• Junior and apprentice scales

  220 further classification rows were read and reconciled but are not printed here, because they price a junior, apprentice or trainee base rather than the adult scale this page is about.

• Every other award

  Three awards are read for this page. A percentage from one of them is not evidence about yours, and the differences below are the reason why.

Penalty Rates questions, answered.