Australia annual leave entitlement

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What the law actually says

Every employee other than a casual accrues four weeks of paid annual leave for each year of service, accruing progressively through the year based on ordinary hours worked. Shift workers who meet the definition accrue five weeks. Leave does not expire: it accumulates from year to year, and no award or agreement may reduce it below the NES floor. On termination the employer must pay out the full accrued balance at the rate that would have applied had the leave been taken.

What happens to unused leave in Australia

Annual leave in Australia does not expire. It accumulates from year to year until it is either taken or paid out, which means a long-serving employee can hold a substantial balance and that balance is a real financial liability on the employer's books.

When employment ends, the untaken balance must be paid. This is the rule across the European Union and Australia, and it is the sharpest contrast with the United States, where whether unused time is paid out depends entirely on which state the employee works in.

If you run a team in Australia

• Write the entitlement into every contract. At least 20 days; more is fine, less is void. Collective agreements may add to it.
• Track accrual and carryover to the day, with a record of every approval. When someone leaves, the untaken balance is money you owe, and you will need to show how you got to the number.
• Budget for the payout. Every unused day on the books is a liability at that person's current pay rate — it does not disappear at year end.

If you work in Australia

• Check your contract gives at least 20 days. Anything less is unenforceable.
• Keep your own record of approved leave. Payroll systems get changed; your notes don't.
• When you leave, untaken statutory leave must be paid out. It cannot be forfeited.

Countries with the same 20-day minimum

Compare all 30 countries →

Calculating an employee's balance

Entitlement is the starting point; the working number is what an individual has actually accrued at a given date. Our accrual calculator converts an annual entitlement into a per-pay-period figure and a current balance.

Tracking Australia leave correctly

Because untaken leave is money the employer owes, the balance has to be provable. Spreadsheets fail at exactly the moment they matter — when someone disputes what they were owed on their last day and nobody can reconstruct the record.

For a single-country team, Leavo handles Australia accrual rules, carryover and approvals with a full audit trail. If you employ people in more than one country, statutory entitlements, carryover rules and payout obligations differ in every one — that is the case for a platform like Deel that handles multi-country employment rather than leave alone. We compare the options in our leave management software guide.

Source

Primary source: Fair Work Act 2009, National Employment Standards. Statutory minimums change, and collective agreements frequently exceed them — confirm against the current text before acting. See our methodology.