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Public Holiday Pay for Casual and Part-Time Workers
It depends on whether you work the day and whether you're casual. Working a public holiday always pays at least your base rate, and your award or agreement can pay more. A day off is paid only if you're part-time or full-time and the holiday lands on one of your usual days.
By MarnixPublished Sources
The summer roster is up, and Christmas Day is either on it or noticeably missing. Either way, you're wondering what it does to your pay, in the same few weeks that Christmas costs start to arrive.
What a day off pays comes from rules that cover most employees in Australia. What a holiday shift pays depends on your job's award or agreement, and a free official tool can look it up for you.
A day off on a public holiday
The rule for days off comes from the National Employment Standards, the minimum conditions for most employees in Australia. If you're part-time or full-time, the payment covers the ordinary hours you'd have worked that day at your base rate: your ordinary hourly rate without penalties, loadings, overtime or allowances. Your award or agreement can add to that.
Illustrative: 6 ordinary hours on a usual Friday at a $30 base rate.
Casual loading, generally an extra 25% on each hour you work, isn't holiday pay, so a closed Christmas Day or Boxing Day drops out of a casual's pay. If those are days you'd usually work, the pay covering them will be smaller. Clova shows what's left until payday, which is the number to watch in a fortnight like that.
Working on a public holiday
On top of the base rate, awards and registered agreements set their own extras. These can be a higher public holiday rate, an extra day off, a minimum shift length or an agreed swap of the holiday for another day.
An award sets the minimum pay and conditions for an industry or kind of job, such as retail or hospitality. Some workplaces have a registered enterprise agreement instead, made for that business and approved by the Fair Work Commission.
There's no single public holiday rate for everyone, so the rate a friend gets in another job may not be yours. If you're casual, check whether a public holiday rate you find already includes your casual loading before adding anything to it.
Which days are public holidays this summer
Each state and territory declares its own public holidays. Because Boxing Day falls on a Saturday in 2026, most add a holiday on Monday 28 December, and a few count the evening of Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve.
Each state's declared days, as listed by Fair Work. In SA, 26 and 28 Dec are Proclamation Day holidays.
An evening holiday covers only the hours after its start time. A 4 pm to 10 pm shift on Christmas Eve in South Australia has three ordinary hours and three on the public holiday, and your award or agreement decides how each part is paid.
Check the rate for your shift
Fair Work's free Pay and Conditions Tool looks up the minimum pay for a particular shift. It helps to have these ready:
- your award and your level in it, which payroll can tell you
- your age, because some awards pay junior rates
- whether you're casual, part-time or full-time
- the shift's date and its start and finish times.
If your workplace has an enterprise agreement, the tool's award result won't reflect it. The agreement's own rates apply, and payroll can point you to them.
When the pay arrives, compare the hours and gross pay on your payslip with what you looked up, rather than the amount that reached your bank, which has had tax taken out. Your payslip explained shows where to find those lines.
If they don't match, ask payroll first, with the date, the hours and the rate you expected. Fair Work's Infoline on 13 13 94 can help if it isn't sorted from there.
Plan the pays around the holidays
Plan the pays around Christmas from the shifts you've actually been given and give anything extra a job once it lands. Budgeting on an irregular income walks through that habit for any roster that moves around.
A holiday shift that pays more than usual is also a good place to start a small buffer for the quieter weeks after it. When a pay period ends with money left over, Clova asks where it should go, so the extra has a place before it blends into the next fortnight.
Knowing your public holiday pay means you can answer a Christmas shift request with the numbers in front of you, and plan Christmas around pay you can count on.
A note from us
A holiday roster should be something you can plan around, not something you find out about on payday. Clova plans each pay into allocations, so you can see what a lighter holiday pay still has to carry.