Annual Leave and Leave Loading: How They Show Up in Your Pay

You've booked your first proper holiday since starting the job, and now you're wondering what your pay will look like while you're away. There might even be a line on a payslip called leave loading that nobody has explained.

Annual leave gives you paid time off, usually at your base rate. Leave loading, if your job includes it, is a little extra on top. Both follow rules you can check, so the pays around your holiday don't have to be a guess.

How much annual leave you build up

Full-time and part-time employees get at least 4 weeks of paid annual leave a year, based on their ordinary hours, the hours they're normally rostered to work. Someone working 20 hours a week builds up 80 hours over a year, which is 4 weeks for them. Casuals don't get paid annual leave; the casual loading in their hourly rate is paid instead, and casual or part-time compares the two over a year.

Leave starts building from your first day, including during probation. It builds up a little each week rather than arriving in one go, and whatever you don't use carries over to the next year.

Meet Ellie, a made-up example: she works 38 hours a week, full time, and earns a base wage of $1,200 a week. She wants two weeks off six months after starting.

Your current balance is often on your payslip, though it doesn't have to be. Your employer must tell you if you ask. If your payslip has a lot of lines to decode, your payslip explained goes through them one by one.

What leave loading is

The minimum is your base rate, the ordinary hourly rate before extras such as overtime; your award or agreement may pay more. If you usually work Saturdays or evenings, a week of leave can pay less than a normal working week.

Leave loading is an extra amount some employees get on top of their annual leave pay. It isn't part of the minimum rules every employee gets. It comes from your award, which sets minimum pay and conditions for an industry or job, or from your enterprise agreement. Where it applies, it's commonly 17.5% of your base pay for the leave.

Some awards give shiftworkers the higher of the 17.5% loading or the shift penalties they'd normally have earned, rather than both. To check yours, Fair Work's payment for annual leave page lets you look up what your award says. Its Pay and Conditions Tool also finds the award that covers you.

How leave shows up on your payslip

Ellie's award gives her 17.5% leave loading. For her two weeks away, her payslip shows the leave and the loading as separate lines.

That's more than Ellie would earn by working those two weeks. Someone whose normal pay includes weekend penalties might see a smaller difference, or none.

Leave can be paid in your normal pay cycle, or all at once before you go if your employer agrees. Payroll spreads advance pay over the leave weeks when calculating withholding. The pays you'd normally get during those weeks have already arrived, though, so there's no deposit while you're away.

That's the part worth planning for. Money for the rent due while you're on holiday is sitting in your account before you leave, alongside your holiday spending. Give it its own amount the day it lands, so a good week away doesn't use next fortnight's rent. Our holiday budget guide covers the trip itself.

We are building Clova, a budgeting app that plans each pay around the bills due before the next one, including an advance leave payment.

Super, public holidays and unused leave

Your employer's 12% super is paid on annual leave and, in most cases, on leave loading too. The exception is loading that clearly makes up for overtime you'd have worked. Our guide to super in your first job explains where that contribution goes.

If a public holiday falls during your leave on a day you'd normally work, it's paid as a public holiday and doesn't come out of your leave balance. Our guide to public holiday pay has the details.

Leave you never take isn't lost. When a job ends, your employer must pay out every hour of unused annual leave at what you'd have received for taking it, including any leave loading. That payout doesn't attract super, and payroll uses a different tax table for it.

Before you book, you can check your balance and when the money lands.

A note from us

A first paid holiday is a change from casual work: time away can still be paid time.